I’m throwing this idea out there in hopes someone can make it happen.
Stay Positive & Steal Our Idea
Unlocking Potential: Interview #7 With Dana Arnold
I’ve ran into a handful of linchpins since my last segment of Unlocking Potential, and I am ecstatic to be sharing these interviews with you again. Remember, linchpins are people who are essential to business success.
One of the easiest ways to check if you are doing work that matters, if you’re a linchpin is to ask yourself if your business and the people you work with can continue without you around? Are you essential?
Dana Arnold is a linchpin at Hiebing, an integrated marketing and brand development firm in Madison, Wisconsin. She is remarkable. While typically we start by giving some background, I’ve jumped the gun and wrote a profile feature on her already.
In short, she’s a Public Relations guru, mentor, and a woman who started her first PR business at 25. Without further ado, welcome Dana Arnold.
Q: What are three main skills you need to do what you do?
Dana: Strong communication – writing, listening, speaking; empathy helps on two fronts – understanding a target market and counseling clients; creativity – I’m in the idea business and finding new angles and opportunities moves the brands I represent forward.
Q: I have my own reasons, but what do you think makes you indispensable, a true linchpin?
Dana: This is a tough one! On my best days, I hope that it’s my constant pursuit for what’s possible. I think that any team (including mine) wants to be inspired and pushed. I think I do that on a pretty consistent basis. It makes the individual better, the team better, the work better and ultimately our clients better.
Q: Where do you find inspiration to test new waters and walk past boundaries?
Dana: I can’t help but want to push past boundaries… fiercely independent and really curious (just ask my mom!) Daily inspiration I find most often in reading, which I do constantly – mostly digital reading at this point of articles, blogs, tweets. There are some people I read who are in the business – but most of what I find inspiring is reading things on leadership.
Q: What are a few habits that are critical to becoming a remarkable PR pro?
Dana: Reading, daily. Getting out from behind the computer to TALK to people: co-workers, clients, media, vendors.
Q: In one sentence, what is your life calling?
Dana: In every interaction, live positively.
Q: What are four life lessons you have learned from following your calling?
Dana: 1. You can just go with what surrounds you – or influence it. I choose to influence it. 2. Perseverance. 3. Everything matters – every word, every gesture, every piece of interaction has an impact. 4. LAUGH – a lot – and surround yourself with people who want to laugh along with you.
Q: How do you push your client’s or your team’s imagination and motivation?
Dana: With clients, I regularly share new ideas, opportunities and approaches to what we’re doing – and being sure to connect those items to why their target audience cares about it (and how it can move the needle for their business). I hope that I inspire my team’s motivation and imagination by leading by example… and asking a lot of questions (not giving them the answers)
Q: What do you do to continue your growth as a PR pro?
Dana: I’m a member of PRSA and Counselor’s Academy (a sector of PRSA for PR agency leaders); I read voraciously; I surround myself with a really smart team that pushes me; I attend key conferences such as SXSW
Q: What motto do you live by?
Dana: As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. (An excerpt of a full quote that I LOVE from Marianne Williamson)
Q: If you got to write a test for those who want to go into heaven, what is one question that would be on the test?
Dana: How much did you love?
Q: What couldn’t you live without?
Dana: Coffee (you’ve got this!) + Wine (hey, you gave it your best shot!)
Q: What is a project you’ve wanted to create, but haven’t had the time to do?
Dana: Something that helps set up young, professional women to succeed in the workplace.
Q: Where can people find you and your art?
Dana: @BigKitchen and www.hiebing.com/blogworthy
Stay Positive & Let Your Light Shine
Enlighten Others
Who Is The Hustle For?
Alex wrote a good piece about marathon hustling. My reminder to all is to fail fast. The quickest way to figure out your perfect marathon hustle is to sprint, burnout, then sprint at just a bit slower speed, burnout and repeat until you’ve found your pace with no burnout.
After finding your pace, still find ways to fail, of course.
But then you’re at the point that defines you as an entrepreneur. Once you’ve figured out the perfect method for success on one path, it’s on to the next.
This is what makes entrepreneurship so exciting. Once you’ve found your marathon hustle, your off in a new direction, a new race, finding new ways to fail, to learn, to grow.
And as Alex reminded us: make sure the hustle is for you. It’s the only way you can guarantee others will benefit from your work, your art.
Stay Positive & Follow Your Heart, It’s The Best Business Coach Out There
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Enlighten Others
Your Consumers Are Only Getting Smarter
The uninformed consumer is passé.
It’s ever more important to put a story out that matters (if not because you actually have one that matters, but because it is becoming the only way to survive in business).
The days of advertising and appealing to the mass are over. Now people are steadily searching out brands, reading about stories, seeing reviews from people who worked at the company of the product they want to buy. They actively ask what their friends think of a particular product before making a purchase. They read the “about us” page before they continue looking at what to buy.
Very soon Unilever will lose customers to their brands because people will see that they run provocative ads for their Axe brand that directly counters the messages they are trying to get across with their Dove brand.
These conglomerates that are trying to reach the mass by switching what brand they slap on a product won’t benefit them in the long run, simply because people are now realizing how one company is running the majority, and they’re not happy about that.
Take the beer industry for instance. The rise in craft brewery sales can be pinned (among other things) to consumer’s realization that Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors are the parent companies to some of their previously favorite beer brands.
Now people are starting to go to the restaurant that has a family story over the chain restaurant where computers rule.
In the past, having 20 brands owned owned by a parent brand worked. Now people want one brand (the parent) with one product. And that’s good for you and me because it offers us the chance to tell a story that truly matters, resonates with humans (not robotic consumerists), and allows us to pour our hearts into one bucket.
Stay Positive & Being Passionately Forward Leads To Consumer Attachment
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Enlighten Others
Where To Find Your Muse
The feeling of boredom comes to every linchpin, artist, and entrepreneur from time to time. The reason is quite clear: actions have become easy, challenges are few and far between, and there is less need of a growing skill.
As a result, the impresario seeks out larger challenges that require focus, additional connections, and an incessant need to learn new skills to accomplish the goal.
But once the artist sets down that path, she realizes she has set too lofty of a goal, too large of an expectation of herself, too tough of a challenge, so she returns to the start of this post, desiring a calmer path, a quieter challenge, an easier goal.
As Peter Turchi writes, it’s a cycle of satisfaction and frustration. To find our muse we must find the flow between the anxiety of a difficult practice and the boredom of an easy task.
The real problem isn’t doing what it takes to stay within your flow, your muse; it’s noticing when you’re outside of it, when a task is too easy or a challenge too large. Both of which are slippery slopes that lead to failure and resentment.
Stay Positive & Be Aware Of Your Flow
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Enlighten Others
Two Ways To Succeed
Some successful entrepreneurs, writers, artists are hustlers. They beat the competition because they work harder, faster, smarter. They give themselves short deadlines they never miss. They run laps around their competitors.
The other successful method is endurance. If you can just outlast your competitors, you will succeed. People who blog every day for four years, manage to host a podcast seven days a week, write a book each year, they succeed because they have built themselves to survive.
Both methods have their tribulations. The challenge is choosing which is true to you, your energy, your passion.
Stay Positive & Choose, Then Run With It
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Enlighten Others
So You Found A Typo
I make typos every now and then. Sometimes I find them myself when I go back and read what I’ve written. Sometimes others find them after months of my blog post or book being published. The question I’ve wrestled with when editing writing is what does it mean to have a typo?
One could argue it means I’m lazy, I hired a terrible editor or I forgot to hit spell check.
One could also argue it means I’m human, that I’ve read and reread what I’ve written so many times to make sure I got the right message across that I just couldn’t catch small typos. I call it being lost in the magic.
Typos are one of authors’ largest fears and disappointments. When we publish a book, we dislike when people find a blemish. It detracts from the purpose of the reading and it confuses the readers because now they are wondering if we know about the typo? Should they email us? How did it happen, anyway?
I appreciate authors like Seth Godin who live up to the typos and solve the issue. Godin’s newest book is out now and he has a page where you can let him know if you found a typo.
When quality is a given, small mistakes like a typo can be an opportunity to delight, to connect.
For those who write, welcome the connection. For those who read, reach out. I’ve never talked to an author who was upset about someone pointing out a typo.
Stay Positive & Who Knows, You May Be Rewarded