“You have power over your mind – not outside events.
Realise this, and you will find strength.”
Marcus Aurelius
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Address To The Toothache – Burns Night
Posted on January 25, 2018 by Alun Rees
Researching for my "Toast to the Lassies" at the Burns Supper at
The Celtic Ross Hotel tonight, I came across this poem:
Address To The Toothache
My curse upon your venom'd stang,
That shoots my tortur'd gums alang,
An' thro' my lug gies mony a twang,
Wi' gnawing vengeance,
Tearing my nerves wi' bitter pang,
Like racking engines!
When fevers burn, or argues freezes,
Rheumatics gnaw, or colics squeezes,
Our neibor's sympathy can ease us,
Wi' pitying moan;
But thee - thou hell o' a' diseases -
Aye mocks our groan.
Adown my beard the slavers trickle
I throw the wee stools o'er the mickle,
While round the fire the giglets keckle,
To see me loup,
While, raving mad, I wish a heckle
Were in their doup!
In a' the numerous human dools,
Ill hairsts, daft bargains, cutty stools,
Or worthy frien's rak'd i' the mools, -
Sad sight to see!
The tricks o' knaves, or fash o'fools,
Thou bear'st the gree!
Where'er that place be priests ca' hell,
Where a' the tones o' misery yell,
An' ranked plagues their numbers tell,
In dreadfu' raw,
Thou, Toothache, surely bear'st the bell,
Amang them a'!
O thou grim, mischief-making chiel,
That gars the notes o' discord squeel,
Till daft mankind aft dance a reel
In gore, a shoe-thick,
Gie a' the faes o' Scotland's weal
A townmond's toothache!Filed under: Blog, Dentistry, Speaking | Leave a comment »
The Monday Morning Quote #466
Posted on January 22, 2018 by Alun Rees
“The essential principal of business—of occupation in the world—is this: figure out some way in which you get paid for playing.”
Alan Watts
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The Monday Morning Quote #465
Posted on January 15, 2018 by Alun Rees
Interaction Vs Transaction – from The Story of Telling
Posted on January 10, 2018 by Alun Rees
The Story of Telling is one of my top 10 business blogs, it always gives me something to consider either for myself or to pass on to my clients – and usually both.
Today’s posting, Interaction v Transaction features The Big Issue magazine sellers
….But just because it works doesn’t mean it’s the best strategy for generating the most sales or building the magazine seller’s business….
…..In our hurry to succeed we sometimes overlook the opportunity to engage first and sell later. Marketing works best when it’s anticipated, and the person on the other side of the interaction feels like they have had a hand in the result….
Take a minute and read the entry.
Filed under: 7 Pillars of Successful Dental Business, Blog, Business, Marketing | Leave a comment »
We are NOT Goldfish
Posted on January 9, 2018 by Alun Rees
The Year End clear out – this from 2014! Has anything changed?
I don’t know why I’m still surprised by people who use ad blockers but still spend money on advertising…
Advertising is a huge source of the “data pollution” Fred Wilson talked about at LeWeb a few weeks ago. (See here, starting at about 23 minutes in.)
What’s wrong with this view, and this approach, is the architectural assumption that:
- We are consumers and nothing more. Fish in a bowl.
- The Net — and the Web especially — is a container.
- Advertisers have a right to target us in that container. And to track us so we can be targeted.
- Negative externalities, such as data pollution, don’t matter.
- This can all be rationalized as an economic necessity.
Yet here is what remains true, regardless of the prevailing assumptions of the marketing world:
- We are not fish. Rather, as Cluetrain put it (in 1999!), we are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers. we are human beings and our reach exceeds your grasp. deal with it.
- The Net was designed as a wide open space where all the intelligence that matters is at its ends, and each of us sits (stands, walks, drives) at one.
- Even if advertisers have a legal right to target us, their manners are terrible and doomed for correction.
- Negative externalities matter. A lot. As Fred said in his talk, we eventually dealt with the pollution caused by industry, and we’ll deal with it in the virtual world as well.
- The larger economic necessity is for a well-functioning marketplace. We’ll get that online once free customers prove more valuable than captive ones.
The key is to replicate online the experience of operating as a free and independent customer in the physical world.
For example, when you go into a store, your default state is anonymity. Unless you are already known by name to the people at the store, you are nameless by default. This is a civic grace. There is no need to know everybody by name, and to do so might actually slow things down and make the world strange and creepy. (Ask anybody who has lived in a surveillance state, such as East Germany before it fell, what it is like to be followed, or to know you might be followed, all the time.) We haven’t yet invented ways to be anonymous online, or to control one’s anonymity. But that’s a challenge, isn’t it? Meaning it is also a market opportunity.
We’ve lived in a fishbowl long enough. Time to get human. I guarantee there’s a lot more money coming from human beings than from fish whose only utterances are clicks.
Filed under: 7 Pillars of Successful Dental Business, Blog, Business, Marketing, Sales | Leave a comment »
The Monday Morning Quote #464
Posted on January 8, 2018 by Alun Rees
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
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