📬 Great Memories, Good Advice, and Bad Tactics: Tim’s Email for December 12, 2020

December 12, 2020

—IN THIS ISSUE—

• HELLO IN THERE: I can’t believe it’s been four years.
• BEING GOOD COMPANY (PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT): The best possible gift for yourself and those you love this holiday season.
• KEEPING GOOD COMPANY (COMPANY CULTURE): Artifacts, Rituals, and Science
• MAKING GOOD COMPANY (MARKETING AND ADVERTISING): When good advertising copy goes bad.. very bad… very quickly…
• THE BACK NINE: Stuff we loved from the past couple weeks. We think you’ll love at least one of the nine, too.

Hello in there.

I was recording a video when the call came from home, so I sent it to voicemail and planned to call back. But then came the text saying to answer. 

EMTs were at the house working on Dad. They did the best they could, but he was too weak and too sick and before I could even get out of our neighborhood in the frantic rush home, I got a second call. It was the call we all know is coming but nothing really prepares us for. It was December 11th, 2016.

We lost Dad four years ago yesterday. He was 80—right on the button for median age in the United States. His was a life well lived… full of humility, kindness, generosity, and a smile wider than the Mississippi River. Speaking of which, he took us to that old man’s mouth once during one of those gonna-see-fourteen-states-in-five-days family fandangos fueled by camper fumes and car bingo and spray-cheese-in-a-can .

Miss you, Pop. Miss those family vacations. Miss everything.

But I remember everything, too. Love you. 

Being Good Company
 

Thanks to that life well lived, Dad lives on through stories and memories and the “recollections of Rich” that so many cherish and still wish to share with his family. They are gifts more valuable than gold.

He sits over my shoulder in the office reminding me, too, to always be humble, kind, helpful, and generous… to listen… to remember things about the people that you meet each day, to treat the person at the front desk with the same grace, class, and respect that you treat the CEO.

Thank you, God, for making me my Father’s son. I reckon I, too, have about 30 years left—give or take—to make a difference in the lives of others. Someday, sooner than later, my own’s son’s phone will ring.

What I do between now and then is entirely up to the good Lord and me. The same is true for you. Remember: Today is a gift; that’s why we call it the present.

Keeping Good Company

It’s not just clutter, you know? Keepsaking pictures and posters  and mementos and sharing stories and experiences are some of the most powerful secrets to building and sustaining a remarkable company culture. These are the things connect us both in our personal and professional lives.

Things like this are also EXACTLY why Dress Like An Elf Day matters for your next Zoom meeting (thanks, Kate!).

Seriously: it’s science.

Intuitively, many of us know rituals, artifacts, symbols, and ceremonies connect us and deepen our bonds and strengthen our company culture, but did you know it was researched?

Emmanuel Peter Udo in his dissertation for Marquette University — “Symbols, artifacts, rituals, and ceremonies: Archtypes of community in a selected private high school”—found:

“…a match between school mission and goals and the symbols, artifacts, rituals, and ceremonies used in the school. The messages conveyed by those symbolic expressions reflected those goals and mission. Symbols and rituals would be most effective when those creating them are conscious of the values and the messages they want to communicate. Those envisioning a school as a community must critically consider the actual values operative in each school context, how these values are manifested in the school’s organizational structure, and the consequences that will emerge as a result.”

Hmm… maybe there’s something to this whole “values” thing… 

What rituals, artifacts, symbols, or ceremonies do you have in your company? Is it time to add another?

Making Good Company

The message in my inbox started with:

“Your website’s design is absolutely brilliant. The visuals really enhance your message and the content compels action. I’ve forwarded it to a few of my contacts who I think could benefit from your services.”

But the flattery didn’t get them anywhere. Don’t get me wrong: It got her foot in the door. The writing was personal, clear, and compelling. I was blown away when it arrived in my inbox on Wednesday at 4:47 PM from Tracy.

See, I get copies of most of my clients’ contact forms cc’d to me. They’re great research not only to see what people think of us but to help us—with our own writing—make sure we’re talking to people about what matters to them in the language they use.

It was a cold-call (re: SPAM) email from a digital marketing firm, but boy! Weren’t they smart! They could see I was smart! 😂

Now, the rest of the email went on to suggest they could help us with SEO (like “osmosis,” SEO is one of those things you can mention to sound smart) if we would just please connect with her, Tracy, to be our rep.

Fast-forward 11 minutes.

I was blown away when it arrived in my inbox on Wednesday at 4:58 PM from Claire. It opened with:

“Your website’s design is absolutely brilliant. The visuals really enhance your message and the content compels action. I’ve forwarded it to a few of my contacts who I think could benefit from your services.”

Yep. They went to the trouble of crafting a great message but failed to properly integrate it into their CRM tool to make sure we had only one rep. Oh, and also, they emailed us without our permission. Side note: Don’t do that.

Sigh. Can’t we all agree life’s too short and too precious to do jerkface-weasel things like this?

Earn business by working to transfer your conviction in what you do or make over to another person. Earn. It. Then do it again. You don’t have to love your job, but you should be proud of the work you do to help others. Don’t take shortcuts.

Maybe I should send copies of Dad’s picture to Claire and Tracy to sit over their shoulders, too… that is, if they even exist… I could also send them a copy of this list of life lessons that starts off our Back Nine today…

The Back Nine

For new folks here, these are nine-ish little links, videos, or stories that we found helpful or delightful or both… and we believe you will, too…

1. This list of life lessons from Andy Griffith is my new favorite thing, and it’s from my new favorite friend Jackie. Now, she’s an amazing copywriter, but in addition to skillfully wielding nouns and verbs, she also deftly juggles integrity, critical thinking, and awesomeness with equal skill. (And she also probably hates all the adverbs I used in this paragraph.)

2. Some people are crafty; my wife is constructiony. The office you see in the pic above started as four bare walls and a funky, angled ceiling in a room too small to be called a bedroom. She transformed it into the most amazing home office space. Speaking of which, while I don’t regularly do Twitter, I do like lurking at this fun account looking at and quickly rating people’s home offices/backgrounds when they do remote interviews on TV.

3. Speaking of speaking of which, for your next Zoom meeting, I give you these vintage-era Soviet control room pictures for your virtual backgrounds. You’re welcome.

4. By all accounts we lost a kind, generous, caring entrepreneur in Zappos’ co-founder Tony Hsieh (pronounced “Shay”). I’m not focusing on (or sharing) the sad second-hand accounts of his last few months. I wanted to share this terrific Tony tribute from one of my favorite podcast hosts, Guy Raz.  

5. One of the many blessings of growing up in a small town is that one of the EMTs that worked on Dad was a kid named Brodie. He’s, like, 7 years old I think. Either that, or we’ve both grown up and time’s gone by much too fast. A few months after Dad passed, I got to see Brodie’s Mom & Dad (who I still can’t call by their first names even though I’m older now than they were then) we’ll call Mr. and Mrs. C, and I got to thank them for raising three fine boys. We may move to a new city or town, but home is always home, and your people are always your people. In a class I teach on Leading With Love, I share a short video by an EMT about truth. It’s surprising and powerful.

6. Last time, I mentioned I have—as I hope we all do—that one friend on social media who always feels like she’s sharing just the right things at just the right times just for me. I enjoy following her social media pictures and short essays so much. She calls them Walks with Nancy. I call them the cure for what ails you. She and her husband Tom were two of Dad’s very favorite people. #same

7. Both ends of the Christmas music spectrum have been making the rounds on social media. I give you loud Christmas awesome followed by quiet Christmas awesome: 

8. This book rocked my world, and it’s now in the swaddled-infant stages of rocking our company: Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy. (Disclaimer: I am *not* a member of their coaching program and have received *no* compensation for promoting this book. I only recommend things I love. This book is one of those things.)

9. And finally, this from James Clear:

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Welp, that’s it for this week.

I hope you take a moment to think about the people who sit over your shoulder and helped make you who you are today. I hope you realize life is short and today is a gift. And I hope you’ll go out and, like Hsieh, serve those you lead. It’s both this simple and this hard.

Thanks for being awesome,

Oh, and PS – The rest of Rich’s family wishes you a very Merry Christmas. We’re doing great, and we hope and pray the same is true for you.

Oh, and PPS – Starting in January, I’m going to switch my email address to me@tims.email. To make sure you keep getting these, feel free to add it to your address book or shoot me an email now or anytime. It’s already up and running.