Cautionary Tales
As jury selection entered its second hour, with no end in sight, the prosecutor strolled slowly to his table, grabbed his notes, paged through them, paused, paged through them some more, took a deep breath, and then asked, “Have any of you ever had a negative encounter with a prosecutor that would prevent you from…
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I was up past my bedtime last night watching the NHL playoffs (St. Louis Blues 4, Colorado Avalanche 1. Woo-hoo!) And I had to rush downtown this morning to report for jury duty. So I’m sitting here, sleep-deprived, in the St. Louis Municipal Courts jury waiting room (quite possibly the dreariest place in the galaxy). The…
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I woke this morning to an email from a guy named Chad who claimed his appointment-setting firm could add “an extra 20K to 40K” to my monthly recurring revenue. Wow! What a promise. The email contained a video. And in the video, Chad said this: “We have a system that allows us to harvest anywhere…
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A few months back, I saw a video on Facebook by a marketer named Victory. The video begins with a camera panning across his well-appointed bedroom. Victory strolls into the frame, sits on his king size bed, ties his fashionable shoes, and then marches from his room down the stairs and out the front-door of…
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Yesterday, I was minding my own business, scrolling through a news feed, when I came across an article that preached storytelling. And, mercy me, that article was…. …BORING! I read the first sentence and quickly began to tune out. My eyelids were heavy. My head began to bob. Then I got to the part that…
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Yesterday, I shared the story of how a hit-and-run driver wrecked my car. I was stopped at an intersection. The truck driver cut a left turn too tightly and slammed their trailer into my car. I didn’t get the driver’s license plate. No company logos or other identifying info on the truck or trailer. No recording…
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A few hours before leaving on my family vacation last week, I was running errands around town when this happened… I was in my car, idling in the intersection turn lane, waiting for the left-turn arrow, turning the radio to another station. Not a care in the world… …and then the airbag exploded in my…
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I got an eye-roll-inducing email yesterday from a marketer named Stephanie. I signed up for her list a few months ago. So technically, this wasn’t SPAM… …but it sure felt like it. Here’s what it said: Hi there Tom, I wanted to send you a special note, but I don’t have your mailing address 🙂…
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“I don’t have an interesting story,” Elizabeth said. Her shoulders slumped. She stared at her shoes. Elizabeth was a client. We’d discussed how storytelling captivates prospects and inspires them to act. She understood and agreed. But then she told me she didn’t have what it takes. “There’s nothing about me worth telling. My story is…
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I fired a client last month. It felt great. I should have done it several months ago, but I balked. This client didn’t return emails, voicemails or texts. Didn’t complete work they promised. Didn’t meet deadlines for work they delivered. Then, they would pop up out of the blue and bark some command at me,…
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