A good story is obvious…once you see it The best stories appear effortless. Whether it is someone spinning a yarn, telling you in less than 10 seconds why you should be interested in what they’re selling, or the first thing read on a website, a good story captivates us. As Lisa Cron outlines in her … Continue reading A good story is obvious…once you see or hear it
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Occam’s Razor is a principle from philosophy which can be applied to writing – all writing, including your first most important story. In Latin Occam’s Razor is sometimes called lex parsimoniae, or “the law of briefness”. This Latin roughly translates as “more things should not be use than are necessary.” For example, if there’s two … Continue reading Applying Occam’s Razor to your writing
The truth won’t kill your business, but a non-truth my well push it down that path. Having a value proposition which doesn’t resonate with who you are, or who people think you are is extremely counterproductive. You’re not only trying to fool your customers, you’re trying to fool yourself. As an example, for a few … Continue reading Why you should tell the truth when naming your baby
All businesses are telling their stories all the time. But it can be a mightily difficult task to retain coherence in all those stories. (Different people tell different stories in different ways). It is very easy to go off on a tangent as you illustrate your different products and services. Such tangents are natural good … Continue reading The huge value of a messaging ‘North Star’
Adding more words to a message is easy. It usually adds up to simply being more noise. The ability to remove unnecessary, extraneous words, which add nothing to a narrative, is the main trick we need in our writing. What we leave out, the stuff that’s superfluous to the story, is how we demonstrate clarity … Continue reading Musicians play the notes, maestros play the pauses
The goal of any story is to have a reader, view or listener get the point…quickly and easily. It doesn’t matter whether the story is the reason why we’re late for a meeting or the moral behind an Aesop Fable. Someone is telling someone else what happened. The core idea of your said or read … Continue reading Why One Central Truth is vital for your key message
The great default word – solutions – should never be used in your value proposition, or Million Dollar Message. (Actually, there is one place is can be, race to the end if you want to know where). For a start, all businesses provide a solution in one way or another. So, to use it in … Continue reading ‘Solutions’ is not the solution (even if it feels like it should be)
Unless you’re a psychopath it’s very likely you carry some ‘imposter syndrome’ on at least one of your shoulders. We all live with the secret fear one day we’ll be exposed as not so clever or competent as we pretend to be. The weight of our (self-imposed) expectations of ourselves forces us to be complicated. … Continue reading Why we’re afraid to be simple
Don’t repeat your ‘what’ if your business name gives me a clue If, by luck or construction, your business name gives me a clue what you do…great start. Doing so allows you greater freedom in playing with the next few words, especially to achieve an emotional connection with a potential customer. If I know your … Continue reading Don’t repeat your ‘what’ if your business name gives me a clue
Just look what a growing sense of tech self belief is achieving…the 14th TIN report has just been released – and what wonderful reading it is for New Zealand. Here are the combined ICT, High tech manufacturing and biotech industries cracking over $11 billion dollars in revenue, growing at more than 11% over last year, … Continue reading Tech self belief and telling our stories