I have a terrible confession to get off my chest. It is a secret I have tried to hide from family and friends for years. Up to this point, I have been fairly successful in hiding this but I believe the time has come to clear the air. Having a secret is a terrible burden [...]

Whether or not you’re a fan of the Dublin-based rock band U2, if you’ve heard their song “Beautiful Day” on your iPod or over the airwaves, you might automatically recall the melody line. For others, maybe we needed the sticky nine words above to conjure up the melody line, and now we’re in another world, [...]

In growing up one of the outstanding things in my relationship with my mother had to do with her memory. She could remember everything. All I had to do was ask dear old mom and she knew the answer. She knew everything. No matter the topic, she had an opinion about it, which truly amazed [...]

The great pastime of America throughout the years has been sports. Americans have been ingenious in turning something simple into a sport for everyone to enjoy. I must say I have enjoyed my share of sports. When younger, I was a baseball fan. I went to as many games as possible. The Stadium in Baltimore [...]

The choice is ours: Do we want to shake the dice and wait until our unexpected bird strike before we determine our response? If Captain Sully had waited, he, the crew, the passengers, and the plane would have gone down in flames like other flights before him. The world is waiting on you to get [...]

A few months back I was so sick I had to go see the doctor. That alone indicates the condition was rather serious. I do not like going to the doctor because you have to sit in the waiting room with sick people. I never know what contagious diseases are lurking in the shadows of [...]

Know this: your number will come up. I can’t tell you the exact day of your defining moment, but trust me, it’s coming. And it doesn’t care if you’re ready. Now our friends and family, they do care. They’re rooting for our success and want us to land safely. But let’s be honest: they have [...]

Did you ever have a day when everything went so well that you could not believe you were awake? I have dreams of times when everything goes perfect. Then, I awake to the reality of the world around me. I guess everybody dreams of at least one perfect day. Last week my dream came true… [...]

Imagine the possibilities. We could shortcut heartaches, ensure successes, and take strides ahead of our competition. We could excel in relationships, avoid emotional blowups, and center ourselves before uncertainty comes knocking. We could choose our response ahead of time and guarantee that our defining moments would define us exactly the way we desired. Many people [...]

The Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage and I were watching television listening to a news report and I simply broke out into laughter. “What are you laughing at?” my wife asked. “I’m just thinking of Mrs. Ammon. When I went to school we didn’t need any armed guards. We had Mrs. Ammon and nobody crossed her.” The news report went [...]

Like me, you’ve probably been sold the same claustrophobic cliché your entire life—that life isn’t fair. Well, what if in this situation it is? What if the universe operates according to specific laws and Sully simply used them to his advantage? Here’s what I mean: most people accept the Law of Gravity. For example, despite [...]

I am not one to boast, at least not about myself unless someone is listening, but I do give some time to exercising the little gray cells in my mind. Many people, no names given, spend most of their time yapping while people like me spend their time napping. While napping, I am also exercising [...]

Nope. Life happened and he didn’t have time for anything except an immediate response. But this is precisely what made Captain Sully a hero. And he didn’t need a bird strike to tell him that. He already knew the secret that sets people like him apart. He acknowledged the reality that is no respecter of persons, [...]

I am what many people refer to as a purist. Many do not understand or know what a purist is so let me explain. No, a purist is not a Puritan, although I have nothing against Puritans and lean heavily in their direction. After all, I think it is better to be radical in the [...]

Not everybody realizes how important it is to follow protocol. Many Philistines in our society do things so haphazardly that it is a real affront to those of us who know better. There should be a law forbidding such perfunctory behavior. We have a law for everything else, why not this? Plus, it would better [...]

I refuse to answer for anybody else because it is a full-time job trying to answer for myself. I must confess though, I sometimes cannot give a good answer for myself. Or I can give an answer but not a good one, and when it comes to answers, the Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage demands [...]

We were going to see Captain Sully on the evening news that January day. Regardless of the pilot’s actions following the unlucky bird strike, his number had come up, and life had decided to snatch him from semi-anonymity and thrust him onto center stage. Through a series of events he couldn’t avoid, Captain Sully faced [...]

Somebody came up with the idea that you cannot have your cake and eat it too. I am not sure where that came from, and I am not exactly sure what it means. If I cannot eat my cake, whose cake can I eat? I think it all depends on how you present “the cake” [...]

But defining moments are coming for us. They will hunt us down and find us. They’re not for us or against us. They simply are. They’re a mirror, a complex combination of circumstances, impressions, tones, shades, vibrations, and events meant to do one solitary thing: reveal us. What’s inside of us is going to come [...]

I have given you several options for both online marketing as well as the tried and true offline route used by more businesses than I can count. As with anything, none of them are the end all be all method to reaching your customers. The key is putting multiple marketing methods together to form a [...]