Creating What Matters

Sensational Journalism – Media Hype

This year for my wife and I it’s been fairly traumatic because we have had to handle her breast cancer and our elder two daughter’s weddings – my wife made the dresses while undergoing treatment. We used to watch the evening news at about 10 o’clock at night before going to bed but realized that actually the negative content of the news as reported quite often resulted in us not sleeping well. On Seth Godin’s blog this week he made a very interesting statement about news reporting and content. If we continue to allow the media to dictate our thinking then we end up believing, very often, that the sky is falling in. In reality the sky isn’t falling in. Yes there are bad things happening all over the world but that’s always been the case it’s just that we’ve become much better at global communication and in particular finding bad news. So what is the answer? Find some good news.

We voted with our feet and switched off the television. We actually kept it on and watched numerous episodes of scrubs, highly entertaining and subsequently would actually sleep at night. The world doesn’t stop because we didn’t watch the news and we learnt become much more selective about what we watch and won’t be listened to.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/10/the-problem-with-cable-news.html

Hate Powerpoint – Here’s an Alternative

You may already realise that I’m a fan of Seth Godin and follow his thoughts and processes quite closely. Today is no exception. I’ve hated Powerpoint and computers for any presentation and much more so for one to one presentations. There is nothing worse than sitting a potential business colleague down and saying watch this and I’ll talk you through it. There is no interaction and very little eye contact – resulting in a potentially wasted opportunity.

Seth has a great simple idea that I’ve seen before but well worth reiterating – Use a Talking Pad – in this case a yellow legal pad and a big marker pen.

He explains it so well that I might  just as well let him show you

Your World or THE World

Seth Godin is a guy (founder of  Squidoo.com) who has the uncanny ability to ask questions that rattle around in my skull, sometimes for days, and this is no different. Who am I marketing to and for. So often I market my products or services to the world as I see it rather than the world as my potential customers see it.