The ultimate list of pricing resources for independents
Money is always a touchy subject, isn’t it? Equal pay for equal work done by men and women is still an issue. Companies don’t seem to want employees sharing salary info. Independents rarely share billing information either, and we’re always wondering if we’re charging...Avoid jargon monoxide with the Son Test
Newsletter articles and any other writing — speaking too! — can be improved if you cut out “hollow and meaningless” business language. This gobbledygook is also known as jargon monoxide, a wonderful term I discovered this week in a tweet by Stanford...
10 ways to jump-start your blogging mojo
The last time this happened, in 2012, a Google search pulled up a piddling 31,000 hits. This time, “lost my blogging mojo” brought up more than 700,000 results. I think I am in good company. There are lots of reasons why I seem to have lost my blogging mojo, including...
My new mantra is, ‘Why not?’
If you read this blog, you know that it’s been one helluva a year. Recognizing the fragility of life, my new mantra (“a frequently repeated word, phrase, etc.; a slogan,” to quote the Canadian Oxford Dictionary) is “Why not?” When an...
Lessons from the Dogfather
Jake was our first dog. He’ll probably be our last dog, too. Long before we got our black Lab, I was already imagining the pain of saying goodbye to a treasured member of the family. Our youngest son was just 10, so I figured by that time, he would be old enough...
The expressive language of loss
Any writing can be improved by careful attention to words that convey meaning or emotion, or metaphors and analogies that bring a concept to life. The July issue of my newsletter, Wordnerdery, shares some wonderful examples of expressive writing I’ve found...
Write your own X (Twitter) bio, please!
“Award-winning writer. Organizer. Thinker. Travel fan. Food enthusiast. Evil explorer. Creator. TV specialist. Communicator.” This was a sample Twitter biography helpfully provided by the Twitter Bio Generator. Have you seen it? I ran across this tool recently (sorry,...
Remembering my Dad
My father — Grant Cunningham — was always the go-to guy for anything that needed fixing. His day job for more than 30 years was with Bell Canada (which he always called “Mother Bell”), but on the side he fixed stuff. In his prime, he built a...