You’ve finally finished it. The book that you had been talking about for years and had been planning for even longer is completed. You sit back and pour yourself a well-deserved drink and toast to your hard work and dedication. It’s a dream come true. Or is it? There’s a saying in the writing community that writing the book is the easy part, getting it published is harder. The vast, endless network of writing agents, publishing houses, and boutique printers is daunting and in

When was the last time you went to the library? Hopefully recently, and if not you are missing out! Big or small, urban or rural, five stories or one floor – no matter what, libraries are safe spaces that welcome all. What’s more, they are far more than just a place that holds books. They do many different things for many people with many stories to share. Have you ever wandered into your local library without a direction? Have you gone into the fiction section just to check

We’ve all heard the saying: “A picture’s worth a thousand words.” The earliest recorded use of the sentiment was in 1911, where newspaper editor Tess Flanders advised journalists to “Use a picture. It’s worth a thousand words.” Images have always had a big impact on how people approach marketing and brand communication. Companies invest significant sums in the visual components of their brand building: on logos, packaging, flyers, commercials, eye-catching displays on the end

We know that we've been gone for a bit, working on some exciting projects we look forward to sharing with you in the coming weeks and months. But our weekly blog is back, led off with contributing writer Stacey Ebert reflecting on how she began her summer. I recently returned from a two-month journey to three countries on two continents (including a four-week road trip across the United States). The preparation, coordination, facilitation, and execution took days and included

ebook is an odd term. Sure, the idea of an electronic book is intuitive in its purest form. You share an author’s words online in a pleasantly readable form instead of printing them onto paper, binding them, and shipping them to a warehouse. That definition is very limiting, though. The technologies which make ebooks possible are multimedia storytelling platforms, where words are only one part of the experience. Imagine you could tell the same stories – with the same exact

How many times a week do you find yourself saying, jokingly or otherwise, “I need to get out more”? For me, there are weeks where it’s daily. This week, for a variety of reasons, it’s nearly constant. From reuniting with old friends to planning hikes to diving in oceans and climbing mountains, it always feels like there isn’t enough time in the day (or the week, or the year) to both do work you hopefully love to do as well as everything else there is to see and do in the wo

If you read this blog, chances are that you're a business-minded go-getter like my fellow contributors. You probably also have a decent-sized creative streak. Not me. I'm nearly all creative streak and not so much about the business sense. But I'm lucky enough to work for Present Tense whenever they need a researcher, editor, or niche blog post because they can see the opportunities to add a unique element to their clients’ projects. And while I usually believe that the work

Switching careers – especially if you start your own business mid-career – will leave you short on so many resources: time, money, backup support, and in some cases even energy and hope. You will have only one thing in almost infinite surplus: advice. With the goal of cutting through that clutter instead of adding to it, I’d like to highlight the four books which helped me the most when I left a lucrative consulting job in late 2013 and co-founded Present Tense LLC. The books

Obituaries are fascinating. When you really get down to it, your last impression is very much like your first impression: you only get one chance to tell this story, so make it a good one. Sure, it’s a gloomy topic, but it is a universal truth that there are two realities we all ultimately face: death and taxes. Beyond any personal losses we many have suffered lately, or our passionate awareness of war or crime or other sad affairs, it is undeniable that the first six weeks o

Politics provides lots of possibilities to witness the power of words and stories. What happened this week at the Iowa caucuses in the US presidential election was no exception. In a late night interview, a reporter asked an official from the Bernie Sanders campaign why they had not emphasized his personal background, upbringing, and immigrant family history. “He has a good story to tell,” the reporter said. “We’ll get to it,” the official responded, or something to that effe

There's an old axiom that everyone has a book in them and I, for one, agree with it. There's also a slightly more cynical version that ends with "and that's where it should stay," but I don't necessarily agree with that. And it's not what I'll be addressing in this post. I can probably count on one hand the number of people I've met in my life who didn't have an idea for a book they wanted to write. And the vast majority who do have that book in them tend to admit it once the

When I was a high school teacher, there were never enough hours or minutes in a day, much less week, month, or year to get everything done. Ask any teacher: the line between work and home blurs often, leading to tired, overworked professionals. More and more “asks” are coming from all different directions and although they are “musts”, they invade the much needed and much desired goal of making a difference in students’ lives. With many teachers frequently asked to do seeming

A book can be an invaluable marketing tool for yourself or your business. By book, I don’t the mean the proverbial Great American novel, that half-finished pile of fiction that so many people supposedly have stored in the cloud somewhere. I mean a focused, well-crafted non-fiction book. Whether in e-form or physical form, books are a very efficient way to transfer knowledge with enough depth and detail to establish and enhance the author’s reputation and give readers useful i

This is the latest in a series of blogs on what we at Present Tense LLC call a “Master Story”. In this installment, Frank gives us the next steps in the process of story creation: using your words to provide a consistent story across your content. Sure, we have all heard it said: our actual words make up only a small part of effective storytelling. This saying dates back to the early 1970’s and the work of UCLA psychologist Albert Mehrabian, who derived a famous formula (verb

This is the latest in a series of blogs on what we at Present Tense LLC call a “Master Story”. In this installment, Frank Luby looks at the role the Master Story plays in helping professionals use storytelling to establish their name and reputation. Read the first part of the series, on why you need a Master Story, here. The next time you have a few minutes to fill, start a list. Write down a few things you wish your customers knew about you. Don’t sort it yet, and don’t over

This is the first in a series of blogs on what we at Present Tense LLC call a “Master Story”. In this installment, Chris Thunder looks at the role the Master Story in creating mindful habits and routines in business. Many people disparage habit as this soul-crushing addiction that leads to mindless routines, sapping the marrow of life. But think of how much habit helps you. What would your life be like if you had to think intensively and consciously about each and every task

A few months ago I grew impatient waiting in the lobby of the unemployment office. As is generally the best use of idle hands and minds, I began to eavesdrop and people-watch those around me. Working in sales, I like to euphemistically refer to this as “niche market research.” How are people getting their information these days? How are they networking for jobs, connecting about products, interacting with feedback? And really, are they interacting at all, and what are the sec

The military has perfected a few things over the many years of its storied existence, and one of those happens to be paperwork. You don’t always think about the military as such, when the movies show the glories and brutalities of battle. There is little footage of the mounds of papers that go along with each of those actions. Going to the rifle range? That will be several orders (warning, operations, maybe a fragmentary), requests for ammunition, requests for the range, and

Let’s talk numbers. Say a specialty drink at your favorite coffee shop costs $5. If you gave up two of those drinks per month, you would have enough money to pay for a standard $9.99 per month subscription to a music streaming service such as Spotify or Apple. I used that example recently in a talk at the New Music Seminar and have seen people make similar comparisons on social media. It is convenient and it also gets people’s attention. Both coffee and music are very familia

As a founding member of Race2Rebuild, a charity racing team raising money for disaster recovery projects, I’ve been lucky enough to help plan and attend ‘build days’. These are large events where hundreds of people from all walks of life come together to do good for a day by working to rebuild communities destroyed after natural disasters. Individuals and other charity organizations are part of the mix, but there are always teams of company employees that turn up for the day