Monthly Archives: May 2012

Ill Doctrine – a favorite storyteller.

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Speaking of storytellers, here is a guy that I love listening to, Jay Smooth.  Perhaps it’s because his topics are often removed from my present realm of consciousness or simply because he tells it like it is, clearly from his heart.  Perhaps it’s the fact that I’m proud of him for standing as close as he does in front of a camera without what society would define as ‘not perfect teeth’.  Regardless, I will listen and watch any new video that Ill Doctrine puts out, because I appreciate his wit, his knowledge and his cadence.

Here is his latest: The Hidden Truth About Hip-Hop Conspiracy.

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Snakes in Ojai.

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Even the cartoon snake, creeps me out.

Even typing the word in the title, gives me the willies.  Snakes, eeeewwww. While writing a few posts for a client this morning on Facebook, I saw this post from the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy:

Ojai Valley Land Conservancy SNAKES! Watch at your own risk. Seriously this might disturb you. We have refrained from posting this event that happened outside of the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy office for weeks, but today we are feeling bold.
Share this link if you dare. — in Ojai.
Since the warmer weather has graced the Ojai valley with higher temperatures and hotter rays of sunshine, I was aware that it was only a matter of time until I saw my first alive snake.  I say ‘alive’ because I’ve already ridden past a few flatten snakes while climbing the road to the trails, shaking in my spandex, both times.  I’ve even seen a baby rattler already, but he or she was also dead, beheaded by the hand of a farmer, I’m guessing.

On a completely new topic, I’ve been known to drop my pants quickly, when the pee urge hits.  It’s not like I’m peeing on random corners of a city block, but when out on a long ride or run, I have no problem finding a tree (or not) and marking my territory.  A few years back, I was on a ride with a good friend and the pee urge hit, so we stopped and I ran to the nearest tree that protected Duey from going blind at the sight of my rather white, Irish rump.  I was in such a hurry to release my liquids that I didn’t check the area, until I was mid-stream – at which point, I looked down only to notice that I was peeing on a dead snake. Needless to say that to this day, Duey still reminds me of this story with laughter brimming over his lips as he acts out my ‘gross, I peed on a dead snake’ dance.

So, I am proud to announce that when I ran past my first alive snake on the trail, today during lunch, I didn’t shake, cringe, sprint away or even get the full body tingles that I normally do …I merely peed my pants a little and kept running.  I’d call that progress!

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A gem of a quote by, Edward Abbey.

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One of my many favorite quotes, by my most favorite author of all time, Edward Abbey:

“One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am – a reluctant enthusiast….a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.”

Happy Tuesday.

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Seth Godin’s ‘Naming Things’

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I absolutely love reading Seth Godin’s daily blogs because quite often, the day’s focus is applicable in many ways to something that I’ve been working to better understand.  Take for example, his blog from this past Saturday, May 12th – in this blog he talks about naming items and people as a way to engage with the public.  He points out that there are times that we misname people, which can leave a bad taste in anyone’s mouth, who has ever been the victim of a misnaming.

This blog reminded me of a conversation that I have with myself whenever I or a client uses the word “consumer”.  As a marketer, the word consumer is marketing speak for anyone buying, using, retweeting, reposting someone else’s product, thought, announcement and so on.  We are all consumers of one thing or another.  Yet the word, consumer just doesn’t sit well with me.  Rather the picture I have in my head, whenever I hear this word is of an overweight and highly unconscious being. Yet, perhaps that’s what we’ve become?!  In our society that runs on the buying/selling of products and ideas, how else would you define our actions?!  What does the word, consumer, mean to you?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Here is the full Seth Godin article:

“Over there, by the fire, is that a stick or a snake?”

It turns out that humans have been naming things for a long time. If we know that this is a cheetah, or a grapefruit, we can make intelligent decisions on how to deal with it.

Lately, though, we’ve been naming more than things. Now we classify ideas and opportunities as well.

Getting smart about naming is at the heart of marketing. Calling every single person a ‘customer’, for example, is hardly a nuanced way of engaging with the public. Salespeople are especially nuanced at this, but often make mistakes as well. Car salesman are notorious for misnaming women who walk in (spouse instead of primary decision maker).

As an investor, are you misnaming the businesses you look at, mistaking a cliff business for a bootstrappable idea? Dozens of book editors misnamed Harry Potter at first glance, labeling it a ‘loser from the slush pile’ instead of the most profitable book they were ever offered.

Job interviews are nothing but sessions where we try to put a name on a stranger looking for employment. Is she a superstar in the making or someone we ought to avoid?

Most of all, are you misnaming opportunities and calling them risks instead?

When you are isolated or if the world is stable, your need to name new things goes down, and the world might feel safer as a result. Most of us don’t live in that world, so our ability to name things becomes critical.

Just because we’re not good at it doesn’t mean it’s not important.”

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A response to Sarah Kay’s TED Talk.

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After watching her TED talk ”If I had a daughter …” yesterday, I have never wanted to become like someone else, as much as I wanted to become like, Sarah Kay.  To taste her freedom to speak on stage as a weaver of words, a magician of language; she graced the TED stage as if she were on fire.  A friendly fire, filled with bliss, inspiration, courage, awe and glory.  The audience stood and clapped for her twice for god’s sake because, damn she’s good.

An Aside: I dream of writing, of speaking, of being in this world with the same integrity and rawness that exudes from people like Sarah or from who I imagine her to be.  Hmmm, that’s interesting, I’ve created her into a certain type of person based on her stage presence.  When, in actuality, I have no idea who she is or what she’s like aside from watching her for close to 19 minutes.  I wonder how many other times I’m creating fictitious people out of a single event.  That’s one for the pause bucket.

The fingers of Sarah’s talk reached out through my computer screen and grabbed my heart because her passion is real, tangible and similar to my goals with Side Of The Road Sessions.  She uses spoken word to tell her stories, to brainstorm her thoughts, to uncover her points.  I use the written word to tell stories, to think through challenging conundrums and to discover the clarity in order to make my points – to simply be in this world.  Both spoken and written words are valuable and both seem to be falling apart in our world of social media, through our love affairs with tech gadgets and due to the fact that composing a solid sentence, takes time.

So as a marketer, who spends much of her days on the computer and with social media, can I overcome the global temptation to shorten my words and clutter my life and other’s with abbreviations in order to tell my story in 140 characters?  Can I maintain the ADD mentalities beyond the 5 minutes that statistics say we currently possess, to tell my stories and the stories of my clients?!  I don’t know, but I’m sure as hell striving to reach this goal.  I don’t want to be Sarah Kay, but I sure admire her gumption and much like Sarah, I too will keep putting pen to paper and watch what happens.

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Day 6 and the water still beckons.

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May 4th – La Bocanita, Baja.

An early morning surf session is in the makings, but not before our caffeinated nectar has been finished and natural deposits have been made. Chris is already paddling out on his Dewey Weber long board, showing us that with a few extra paddle strokes, he can master the waves. I’ve learned not to judge the ease of catching the waves by watching Chris or KC because they make any wave look easy, and the swell is mushy this morning.

Regardless of the water patterns, we’ve got this sweet cove, just north of La Bocana and through the town dump, to ourselves again today and only on occasion are we visited by the red Toyota truck dude, orange dirt bike hombre and the men in the passing maroon car.  I assume that each are driving to the point to check the waves, even though they linger a bit longer than I’d like.

While we surf, our fearless watch-dog Chloe, paces the beach, eats a few pieces of seaweed and then retires to the shade of the truck.  If she’s lucky, one of the doors has been left open, to which she helps herself inside for one of her many naps.  Her duty as watch-dog kicks in when the colorful variety of vehicles loudly motor by, yet the naps always seem to outweigh the need to investigate.

For the first time the flies, correctly said to be the size of seagulls, are beginning to form near our camp, but we’re packing up today, so we won’t be bothered as the swarms enlarge with the rising of the sun.  The reef and tide pools are home to langostas, endangered abalone, anemones and a whole host of hermit crabs.  As non-natives we aren’t supposed to catch the langostas and will be greatly fined, should we be caught with any abalone – but used rusted traps, from the natives, liter the beach.  Secretly we wouldn’t mind if a langosta just happened to wash up into our cooking pot, but we won’t pursue them.

The dolphins pass through the cove in pods of 2 and the friendly seal, who has been here since we arrived a few days ago, glances onto the beach, wondering what Chloe is snacking on.  Nellie is now out on her board and has already caught a few good waves.  It’s time for me to paddle out …