Meet Tim’s Thing

The judges convened, and we have a winner. Meet Tim’s thing:

Tim Robinson submitted the following winning entry:

Tim’s thing should be called:
“The First Order of Business…”

It should also be Tim’s next Book Title!

I think the name speaks for itself.
it encompasses the Order, and business aspects of your vision.
And when the first in the order includes values….bonus!

“Chaos is merely order waiting to be deciphered”
― José Saramago, The Double

“The propitious smiles of heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregard the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained.”
Inaugural address 1789”
― George Washington

Tim is tall…..so i was also playing with the idea of using the phrase “it’s a Tall Order…”
when someone takes on a challenging task.

If, about this time in Hazzard County, you have no idea what we’re talking about, you can skip over here and quickly learn about Tim’s thing.

We judged the almost 500 entries and selected Tim’s for first prize. Dee, Ryan, and I judged blindly – meaning we only saw the entries and not who submitted them. Lynn knew who submitted them and was going to serve as final judge if there were any ties. There weren’t.

We really like it. We will also take Tim’s advice and make this the name of my next book (for which a completed first draft will now be scrapped – a different story for a different day).

Phil Wrzesinski submitted something very similar – entering “The Order of Business,” so we’re awarding him the Colossal Bacon Sampler from Burgers’ Smokehouse. We’re doing so because our blind-judged second place finisher, “The Point,” was submitted by Uncle Dirt.

Uncle Dirt is my children’s name for Lynn’s husband John. We can’t give him a prize anyway.

Third prize went to Angie Haynes for “The Miles Method.” We really liked the simplicity of this one, but I felt kinda weird having my name in it. Angie wins copies of four of our favorite books on customer service: Customers For Life, Creating Magic, Delivering Happiness, and The Dream Manager.

Thank you to everyone who entered! If you’re curious about our methods, here were a couple of guidelines I worked up as the contest was going along and entries were coming in by the fistful:

• I wanted to stay away from the word “pyramid” because of the whole bad connotation with “pyramid scheme.”
• I didn’t want to use a word that was in one of the levels. In other words, we eliminated anything that had, for example,”The Strategic Planning _____.”
• I ultimately didn’t want my name to be a part of it because I know guys who’d want their name to be a part of it, and I don’t like most of them.
• We couldn’t use the word “awesome,” because Jon Acuff really beat us to it. If you’re reading his awesome new book, you know what we mean.
• We wanted to be able to see ourselves using it in a boardroom across from one of our clients: “Let’s get back to The First Order of Business…”

See? It works.

Thanks to everyone who entered. The First Order of Business is going to be the, uhh, first order of business for our clients, our company, and this blog as we move forward.

Now, would you like to see some of the ones that we loved for other reasons but didn’t win?