This is where I get off!

It’s Monday morning. The self-induced churn begins. What’s the plan? Gotta have a plan, right? What am I building? How am I growing? Where am I going with all this? Gotta get there. Where? Who knows, just get moving. Hurry!

That’s the mental drill. Always. When do I arrive? I don’t know but I’m not there yet. Or am I? All the noise, the chatter, coming at me from all directions. The mind is restless and fearful it seems, for no apparent reason and the ego is giving me a thorough horse whipping.

Round and round. This has been going on for years. Is this the human conditional treadmill I signed up for? It’s never going to end until I wake up and become conscious.

Destination: Anywhere.

Seems we’re never there. It’s always just up around the bend. Just one more one more. When do I become me? When I pass? What if there’s nothing and I put all my chips on tomorrow? You feel lucky, punk? If not now? When?

I don’t have a routine that I can hypnotize myself with. I never go the same place every day. Don’t have a groove to keep my needle on the record. Creative work varies wildly as do the perceptions of it. It’s been like that for years.

Still, the beatings will continue until morale improves. The holidays are here, let’s batten down the hatches. Brace for the onslaught. Same shit, different year.

Lately, I’ve stopped all incoming media driven nonsense especially when I get up and embrace the stillness. I allow that formless entity, my consciousness, the real me, to guide me. The silence is healing. Listen to it. Listen long enough and the pain will ease. The ego, masquerading as me, will stop nagging and torturing me.

I don’t need to keep adding to me. I don’t have to punish myself for being incomplete. I’m already complete. I recognize it now. Finally.

I’m an early riser. It’s a habit I kept from being in a family of twelve. First one up got dibs on the bathroom, the refrigerator and the iron, in that order. You snooze, you will always lose. Plus, it was quiet. Beautifully still and silent. It wouldn’t be long before the all the noise and confusion would permeate the house and the fight over the one bathroom would more often than not, escalate to violence.

My father would be long gone on his way to work, where he showered and took most of his meals. He would come home at night and go straight to bed. You could go the whole week and never see him. Those mornings, I would duck behind the couch until he left. I asked my mother once what my father did at work. She said “he makes money”.

I imagined him at some type of punch press punching out nickels, dimes and quarters. I never considered paper money because I never saw any. Her explanation made perfect sense to me at the time.

I still love the quiet of the morning and I hardly ever see daylight when I rise. That’s the time when I assess my life and decide, or try to anyway, what makes its way into my consciousness first. I have an elaborate studio over my garage with a futon, a TV and more computers than a (normal) man should have. I usually go to a local TV station first for the weather because I like to ride, run or walk outside and the only thing that changes that routine is rain.

Then the circus begins. The brawl for my attention. The most ridiculous, shoddy, no thought given content ever created, starts coming at me from every screen in that room. They can’t be serious, can they?

I bet they wouldn’t run that nonsense in the daylight or prime time. The worst car, furniture and restaurant commercials you can imagine, with the audio jacked up to make sure you don’t miss the message. Quick! Where’s the mute button?

Then my computer freezes up. Even a system designed for editing and processing terabytes of video content can’t handle 9 video commercials trying to load at the same time while a full screen graphic with no x shoves itself down my gullet. What is going on here? Are these people crazy? This is like the fight over the bathroom all over again. You expect to sell something using sensory overload?

By now, my world view has changed. After 30 minutes of local news filled with hit and runs, house fires and traffic warnings while my computer reboots to regain some ram.

Now you have succeeded in beating the wonder out of me. In your desperate attempt to get my attention you have shut me down. Total media overload. Someone must be taking the bait or else they would run out of money producing this shit. Wouldn’t they?

This lunacy, trying to pass itself off as commerce, does more harm than good. We tune out. We have to, don’t you get that? Pelting people with predictable and unimaginative sales jargon and cluttering up people’s brains with noise and repetition is almost impossible to take, especially when you first become conscious. Here, open wide!

Lately, I’ve been sitting in the dark quiet, sipping my coffee, feeling my existence and easing myself into my day. Looney tunes can wait. It is here, that I am truly, comfortably dumb.

If you have any questions or need advice, please feel free to reach out to me here.

Bob O’Hearn
508-517-6714
bo*@*************ve.com

So, who do you think you are? Who did you think you were?

When I first left the corporate blender I had a pretty hefty multimedia skill set. I got a first class education in the classroom and in the studio. I had ideas and strategies that absolutely horrified management back then. Wonder where they are now? I know and it ain’t pretty. If you’re not ready to shrivel up and die, either go get a hammer or else grab an oar, the emperor wants to go water skiing.

I knew I never wanted to retire. I also didn’t want to be a team member, a company, a corporation or a conglomerate. I wanted to be a solo entity, like the Lone Ranger, that created things and garnered attention, respect and helped people get on to a stage or platform that would get them noticed. But first, I needed my own platform from which to preach the gospel of me. I had to get my own attention first. Today, if you’re shy, you die.

Over the years I have found that not everyone has the stomach to grab the microphone and step out into the spotlight. They prefer to languish in the shadows and leave the blue chips on the table. That option is now fading.

It’s true. None of us can escape the fact there’s nowhere left to run and no one left to run with once you make the leap or get leaped. No big glass logo’d doors to open up wide and provide you shelter from the cold, cruel world. You have found, like I did, that what’s behind those doors is the cold, cruel world. Stay out long enough and you lose the false promise of career ever after.

If you can’t produce, you’ll be reduced. Get your politics wrong, you’re gone. They get you for a bargain and raise the bar until you disappear. Sometimes it’s called attrition, sometimes it’s called downsizing, but mostly it’s called “tuffsky shitsky” and the machine moves on. You’re a 60 year old Twinkie with the filling sucked out. An old time “used to be”. Every employee exists with that reality pressing on their temporal lobe.

Bitching about these organizations is not the intention of this piece. Lord knows, I’ve done enough of that. The fact is, whether your drawing a paycheck or not, you’re still going to have to, at some time, maybe in the near future, figure out just who the fuck you are and deal with it, commercialize it and monetize it. No getting around it.

But that’s not how you were trained. You get a job, settle in and hang on and go with the flow. The problem is, you were a “team player,” which really means you knew how to take orders and don’t stick your neck out.

Now, on to you and your need to build your platform, your stage from which you will attract the kind of attention that will put food on the table, wheels under your keister and keep you from the mercy of the ward attendant.

You need a voice. You need to write, podcast or use video to get your puss on someone’s computer screen. Whether they love you or not, at least you’ll be present. There is no other way. By writing or me-casting. Belly up or belly flop.

And I don’t mean liking and posting dopey pass-through  articles on Facebook or LinkedIn. Twitter is just going through the motions. Clock punching. It has to be you, original and uncut. Stomach flipping, straight from the gut. No one is going to come looking for you, trust me.

You have to build a platform. You need an allaboutme.com. Consider it your multimedia resume. It will take you out of your comfort zone (will it ever) and it will take practice, learning how to give and take a punch and stay in the ring.

If, as a solo act, you aren’t provocative, make people think and speak truth to power you will become the master of the meaningless digit. Even your relatives will overlook you.

We live in a noisy world. You need to highlight your unique skills and what you have to offer the world in a way that’s not offensive. Like any good conversationalist, you need to be a good listener, not a one way street.

This ain’t a multiple choice, it’s your survival, you’ve got to do it someday so it may as well be now. Over the years, I’ve been kicked in the ass so much I can spit shoe polish.

So who are you without your badge? Your parking space? Your 401K and your vaunted team status? Sometime before you shit the big bed you’ll have to ask yourself these questions in the bathroom mirror. You can’t bullshit that guy.

As I wrote in Cram and Scram, all gainful employment has an expiration date on it. And so do you. I don’t happen to believe in Jesus, Judgement or Jehova, but I do have a vested interest on how I spend my final days and it doesn’t include panhandling, penny pinching, prayer or penance.

I have all the tools I need to cut through the noise and I use them. Video, blogging, podcasting and e-strategy. I got forced into the corner and had to fight my way out.

It’s on me to get over the goal line with some semblance of self satisfaction and self respect. Hence, the need for a platform using all the tools available. You already have all the planks, I can help you build yours.

Someone once said “All the world’s a stage,” and if you have something to say— through a blog, a video or a podcast— you are on stage.

If you have something to say— whether one-on-one, before a huge crowd, or on the Internet— you are also on stage. But the stage has never been more crowded— and simply being on it doesn’t matter much if the lights are not shining on you, or if there is no one in the audience. We’re not used to highlighting our talents except for the occasional job interview or reaching for that internal promotion. Self promotion seems like bragging doesn’t it?

Get over it! I know executives and managers who can’t creatively veer off the script when the heat is on. They fold. Unsurprisingly, they’re not very flexible. Platform creation wasn’t part of their college education. Hopefully, it is now.

This post is all about attracting that audience and building a loyal audience who stays with you through every post, every permission based interruption and every update. It’s not about ego or being the center of attention. It is about having something of value to others and finding the most powerful way of getting that message to others who can benefit from it.

If you are someone who has something to say or sell—having a platform will help you reach and keep your intended and even unintended audiences.

There’s no room for stage fright or being overly self conscious these days. If you can’t put up, you’ll have to shut up, so stand up and speak up.

If you have any questions or need advice, please feel free to reach out to me here.

Bob O’Hearn
508-517-6714
bo*@*************ve.com

In the morning, I would much rather sit straight up in the bed hyperventilating, than yawn, pull the covers over my head and lay back down again.

As I reflect back on my 30 plus year career in the corporate bubble, I get a very different perspective in my rear view mirror. As an outsider now, I wonder how I pulled it off. I wonder what I did to keep my sanity while juggling perceptions in an environment that made me feel so incompetent and phony. I was never who they thought I was. I wasn’t even who I thought I was.

After coming in-house, being assigned an office and finding the coffee machine, I spent the next two months walking around the building meeting people and trying to talk up e-strategy, video production and just what the hell I was doing there in the first place. Most of what I got was “watch yourself” or watch out for this one or that one.

I had to play each manager I was dealt, regardless of their quirks or sensitivities. Sometimes they were legion. I had to sit across the table and be judged by someone who pieced together my performance from a spreadsheet and 360 degree gossip from co-workers. Smoke and mirrors to be sure. I grew more anxious and self conscious as the months and years passed.

As I age, I have definitely lost my tolerance for all the bullshit and bad manners in the business world. Used to be, when someone would run me over, I had to take it. Not anymore. When dealing with larger corporate clients you are victim to the vagaries and whims of a one eyed entity where it’s impossible to discern who the final decision maker is, who is grinding you down and who passes off responsibility of any final decision to “them.”

While most are too busy being fabulous, they don’t have a handle on their own big picture. Thankfully, we have turned into a disruptive, vocal, on line community where spleens can be vented and voices can be heard. If I have to suffer at the hands of a pack of morons, I can shout it from the mountain top if for nothing but my own self satisfaction.

This cathartic approach will hopefully keep me from entering a disease state due to overly compulsive thinking and the associated hand wringing that plagues most of the world. I can scream and be heard to lessen my misery when I feel I have been wronged, screwed, ignored, or worse. Beats the shit out of transcendental meditation.

Yeah, I’ve grown to really dislike these institutions that are so mired in their own self delusion and confusion they can’t help themselves. Who hire fluff monkeys to perpetuate a phony presence on social media to give off a positive impression to attract low paid newbies while worried sick over employee retention.

To work with some of them feels like walking a drunken friend home. They wobble and careen out into traffic blissfully unaware of the dangers of the false promises they have to dole out to their captive audience.

I recently wrote about an unpleasant experience I had with a large company who tried to make me feel my insignificance in a big way and showed theirs at the same time. As I’m fond of saying, I’d rather be pissed off than pissed on.

When I start feeling the futility of tilting at windmills, I would have to say yes, sometimes my worst self is my best self.

If you have any questions or need advice, please feel free to reach out to me here.

Bob O’Hearn
508-517-6714
bo*@*************ve.com

Sales: You can never go home.

A funny thing happened on the way to my annual solo sabbatical to Arizona this year. I called a friend who is active in the local business community there to inquire about the weather for the last two weeks of October. In the course of our conversation, he mentioned that an old radiopharmaceuticals distributor of mine had an open sales position and they were looking to fill it. You interested?

For some strange reason my heart rate quickened as I peppered him with questions about the status and timing of the position. I had worked very closely with this group over the years and always considered myself part of their team. I was drooling to have a rematch. I started picturing some more horse property in Cave Creek for Susan, of course.

They have since been gobbled up by Cardinal but still have a presence in radiopharmacy. Warts, notwithstanding. Boy, did that get my juices flowing. I was running that territory when this current batch of rookies were using the kiddie pool.

I had developed so many sales, marketing and on-line chops while trapped in Boston, I thought I might have some fun and add something to the mix. Wrong Bobo, back on your meds.

I was the territory manager for Dupont and Bristol-Myers Squibb from 1990 until 2003. I was relocated in-house by Bristol Myers Squibb, because I had developed a knack for video production, web design and e-marketing back before it was what it is today.

Needless to say, I tried to beg off moving back east for BMS, claiming I could help out from Scottsdale. They didn’t want to hear that and on April 1, 2003, I was shoveling snow with my new neighbors.

Back in the big house, I was immediately underwhelmed. I thought I had wandered onto the set of “The Shining”. During a marketing video shoot once, I realized I needed more tape, so I started to jog slightly towards my equipment when someone said, “Hey, slow down Bob, this is marketing, ya know”.

And the pace deadened from there. I should stop here before I start self medicating but that experience changed me for life. I learned that paranoia isn’t just for pot smokers.

I endured five years but I have to say, I learned quite a bit on their dime. In 2008, I left to start Double O Creative. I spent the next five as an entrepreneur, with all that that entails. Which means learning to live and die by your own hand.

I always missed direct sales. Sure, I owned my own business back east, but the west was beckoning and I always kept a steady eyeball on what was happening in that field. It is also a fixed market. Binary. My business is all over the map. It changes every day. After all, I create content for sales people all the time and the interview was a veiled attempt I guess, to change their game. The impossible dream.

Now, I find myself on the phone with an internal recruiter, discussing my resume (which I have never had to create or submit in my whole life) the job qualifications and my familiarity with their products. She called me back a few days later and told me I was all set and gave me the date and time which fit nicely with my sabbatical. She told me the hiring manager couldn’t reach my salary number but I figured I could up sell once I got in the room.

Interestingly, the recruiter kept admonishing me not to lie. When I tried to tell her I had nothing to lie about she cut me off with “Hey! Just…don’t…lie!” That started my wheels turning. What was that all about? I thought I would move forward with the interview anyway, though I was having second thoughts for having been spoken to in that way. Pretty crude start, I thought. Pure Syncor, all over again. I thought I was up for a position, not parole.

Undeterred, I moved forward because I think interviewing is a healthy if not unnerving exercise and I was very curious about the process post 2008. I have another one in a few weeks that someone reached out to me about and should be a hoot. I have serious masochistic tendencies but this would have been a horrible experience if I really needed the job. Still, why do I do this?

On the appointed day of my interview, I arrived 15 minutes early. I had to ring a security buzzer due to the radioactive content in the building and was waved in by the pharmacy manager. She never said a word to me. She pointed to a conference room and told me to wait in there. Maybe she thought I was delivering pizza.

Unfortunately, she was also one of the interviewers. When the hiring manager showed up fashionably late from Houston, they set up a phone on the chair next to me so the head of operations could participate in the process, then we began.

Remembering not to lie, I told them things I don’t usually tell my wife. I opened the book on myself and never looked back. Their big make or break question was how was I going to secure a contract from a large hospital group in Nevada that was purchasing from someone else they were perfectly happy with and oh, paying a lot less for their product. Minor details. Too bad Attilla is dead, he would have been their perfect choice.

I told them I would “wire the institution”, meaning I would infiltrate the organization completely before handing them an agreement and a pen. I said it wouldn’t happen over night and by the way, what digital tools and materials were they providing to their reps to undertake such an uphill mission?

Crickets.

When I realized I was participating in a farce only Fellini could dream up, I started interviewing them. I turned the table. Why would I want to join a “because we said so”company for a small salary and a big forecast?  What have you done or are doing to change your image in this industry? What efforts are you undertaking to become part of the community? What information are you imparting to your customers that’s not all about you?

Crickets

I mean, it’s not like they don’t only have a set amount of customers and they’re either “for ya, or agin’ ya.” There’s no real creation of new business. They are actually only providing a service. They also have a lot of detractors because the company, despite the Cardinal label is still largely run by radiopharmacists who think Dale Carnegie was married to Roy Rogers.

The pharmacy manager said next to nothing, despite desperate looks from the hiring sales manager while the phone kept falling off the chair and getting disconnected, pissing off the pharmacy manager’s boss.

Who finally chimed in with, “No offense Bob, but when’s the last time you have ever sold anything at all? This, from someone who thinks the only sales tools you ever need is a headlock and a chest bump. I think I’ll write a blog called “Neanderthals Say the Darndest Things” I’m sure the first and last thing he ever sold had Kool-Aid in it.

Full disclosure: I recorded this whole meeting after I saw Eric, the hiring sales manager click his phone on and keep sliding it closer to me as the meeting went on. I looked it up later and although rude not to tell me, it’s not illegal in Arizona as long as one person knows it’s being recorded. Even if it’s it’s just him? WTF?

So after doing everything but tipping the table over, I laughed my way back to my car shaking my head.

I have to say, it was a trip back in time. Before Cardinal bought them, they were Syncor International and trying to get my customers to use their services was like trying to get your best friend to go out with your not so attractive sister.

Pity the poor bastard who ends dragging that bag for that crew with a GPS up their butt. Tough duty! The position will probably be automated by the time you read this.

On second thought, maybe I’ll cancel that next interrogation.

Gargle, rinse and spit.

If you have any questions or need advice, please feel free to reach out to me here.

Bob O’Hearn
508-517-6714
bo*@*************ve.com

The In-House Out-House

If you are a corporate video producer, you can be in-house and still be in the out-house. (Notice I said video producer and not videographer.) The situation arises because you have an entirely different set of skills than the teams you are supporting. You most likely lack the knowledge and empathy needed to help solve communication problems in a structured environment like a corporation or small business. You can feel ’em but you can’t reach ’em.

The reverse is also true. They don’t understand all the capabilities and lack the kind of creative background to provide vision and clarity to a marketing, human resource or executive messaging video production. You can easily overwhelm your clients with terms, options and approaches. Here’s your disconnect with a bow on it.

I’m seeing a lot of ads for in-house video producers lately. The list of qualifications and nice to haves are almost staggering. The jobs seem to be posted as stand alone multi-skilled responsibilities.

I’ve been a corporate video producer for more than 15 yrs. I have produced many corporate, small business and executive communication projects. In that time I have seen the proliferation of video as the go to vehicle for sales, marketing, HR, corporate events and cultural communications. These are certainly amazing times.

What I’m seeing today runs the gamut from high quality, well thought out messaging, to what I call weapons of self destruction. Successful on-camera presentations do not come naturally. To go from credible to cringe worthy is not the outcome you want.

We are approaching the world of Allaboutme.TV. Everyone has access to cameras, accessories and a pathway to an on line audience. You are actually broadcasting yourself if you are using social media in any of its forms..

That being said, there is, and will continue to be, enormous amounts of clutter and eye gouging video content. The state of the art is not good. Attention is the currency we trade in. How you gain it requires strategic, deliberate thinking, most importantly, when it comes to how you present yourself on camera.

In this continuing series, I will be addressing issues that come up time and again in my role as creative evolutionist. I will be sharing many insights on how to approach this critical tool and how to create and star in your own successful video communications.

You want to get through the glass and reach people. You want your audience to feel as though you are imparting valuable information, not trying to force them to pay a ransom.

If you have any questions or need advice, please feel free to reach out to me here.

Bob O’Hearn
508-517-6714
bo*@*************ve.com

If you are in business (yours or another company) and you have an exceptional product, skill or talent, if you are the hands down master of your domain and you don’t know how to enlighten your audience about your offering, you will be reduced to a shrunken version of yourself and never be able to garner the attention you need to share your incredible opportunity.

Stuttering, stammering, rattling the change in your pockets and losing your train of thought will get you to the soup kitchen quicker than a bankruptcy filing.

Passion is the most over used term in the entrepreneurial lexicon but the truth is, if you ain’t got got that swing, it don’t mean a thing. If you can’t credibly articulate all the features and benefits in a way that moves (notice I didn’t say sell) your particular industry or customer base, buh, bye.

What makes the best motivational speakers the most motivational is that core belief in themselves, their product or service and the ability to connect on such a visceral level, a wave of emotion starts to roll off that stage or platform like a tsunami. There’s your power.

Don’t walk on to the stage, seize it. Don’t present it, share it. Make eye contact. Wade into the audience. Speak to an audience member using their name, if possible.

If you are the least bit self conscious, your audience can smell it. Never let them drift, take command. Entertain, enlighten and educate in such a way they are in your thrall. It’s not about you. Ever.

If you are the best in the business, prove it. You are the master of this ceremony. There’s no safety net. Step outside yourself and become part of your audience. Failure to do that is pure selfishness. Meet people beforehand. That way you’re talking to friends. A sea of friendly faces.

Watch any stand up comedian. They own that space. The ones who don’t are staring off into that space. You are there for a reason and that is to move, impress and gain believers. Performance, no excuses.

If you can’t preach what you practice all day, every day, then there’s always Netflix. Go get ’em!

If you have any questions or need advice, please feel free to reach out to me here.

Bob O’Hearn
508-517-6714
bo*@*************ve.com

 Ever sit on a plane and hear the engines cut back as you start breaking through the clouds? You can start to make out your final destination. The landing gear makes that familiar sound and you start your anticipatory ritual. Your heart kicks up a notch and you start putting your junk away, slam your tray table back into position and start looking for that wet nap you had stashed in your brief case.

You think to yourself “well, I should be on the ground in a couple of minutes”. Thirty minutes goes by and you are still circling, closer to the ground but still up there. Impatience rears its ugly head. Enough of this circling already.

There’s a lot of things going on in that cockpit that you are not aware of. Bringing that much humanity and tonnage in to a safe landing must be done carefully and methodically. Sometimes you think the approach took longer than the entire flight. They can’t just spot the runway and nose in at it for obvious reasons but you know that. They must approach the runway cautiously and with feedback from the tower.

Now that I’ve raised your heart rate and made your palms all sweaty, I’ll get to my point:

I have a rule when it comes to carefully bringing in a plane, a project or a campaign or a sale. I call it the 40-20-40 rule. Let’s use video production or a large company meeting as an example. In video the first 40 is called pre-production. Without that up front investment in time and thought, you will definitely run into the problems you had never considered when you attempted landing your valuable cargo. Rushing through the first 40 can cause you no end of heartache as you near your runway.

The second 20 is the acquisition or execution stage, which can run pretty smoothly if you’ve set it up right initially. Not always the case, though. The last 40 is where the footage or data can be organized. edited or analyzed for optimal use. You have some time here to polish the apple if you’ve done the first two steps correctly.

 This is usually where the problems start. If you don’t have the correct approach, anticipated anything that could be a barrier to success, or if you left out a critical component you will pay dearly in the end in frustration and failure

Been there, done that and have the scars to prove it. Whatever doesn’t kill you, as they say.

Being of an impetuous nature myself and being the first one in the pool before checking the water temperature, I have come to see the error of my ways. But not so with some of my clients and associates who, in there zeal to conquer the world will bang the table and yell “let’s just do it”! Oh the pain and and agony that usually ensues. Video production is the most vivid example that comes to my particular experience. It’s a lot of what I do.

The approach is everything. The way you bring that idea to fruition is in the preparation, the strategy and the execution. There’s simply no other way to a successful outcome. Like making a bed backwards, blankets first, sheets later. (Don’t ask how I know). In my professional cheffing days, we always carefully laid out all the ingredients before we started the souffle.

Remember, in any endeavor, if your your looking for a successful outcome, it’s all in the approach.

If you have any questions or need advice, please feel free to reach out to me here.

Bob O’Hearn
508-517-6714
bo*@*************ve.com

Right out of “Pulp Fiction”

I get a lot of frantic video production calls for help from folks who are in a bind either from problems of an external source or a royal screw up of their own making. I’m hesitant at first to step in until I can gather all the critical information. Usually, the problem stems from reaching out to an unfamiliar, less business empathetic video production outfit, or they attempted to try it themselves and it backfired.

There’s always a deadline involved so the pressure goes up exponentially. Honestly, I get more business like this than I do being called in from the git-go. Everyone’s a producer until the shit hits the screen. Lopsided video presentations that leave the viewer out of the equation will always fail and unmerciful criticism will soon be headed in your direction. Or worse, stone silence.

I have a love hate relationship with what I do given the nature of people’s expectations and taste and bringing some folks around to consciousness takes more than smelling salts.

When I do get on the scene of the crime, one certain condition should be met: Listen! If you don’t listen, I walk. Period. I figure I only have so many heartbeats left so I may as well do the types of creative work I enjoy. Period.

There’s usually only two options clients take, Madison Avenue or “home made bread”. The first is wildly expensive, time consuming and overwhelming and the second is a shaky, cheapo, iPhone production from hell. Some are actually headed to an external audience. Why don’t you just claim bankruptcy and head for the soup kitchen?

I lost a bid once to do a marketing video for a clueless marketing communications manager. The yellow colors of their logo didn’t show up well on a DVD. Another company said it wouldn’t be a problem.

A month later she called me into her office and showed me the finished product. She was almost in tears. They put a flash file on the DVD the size of a postage stamp. Have to say, the yellows were beautiful. Pretty slick. Twenty grand down the flusher. When I left her office she was still scratching her head.

As Mr. Wolf would say, “If you don’t listen to me, I’m out and you’re on your own. 15 years of this nuttiness will change you. It’s changed me. Forever. I was just thinking, I make a mean pizza.

If you have any questions or need advice, please feel free to reach out to me here.

Bob O’Hearn
508-517-6714
bo*@*************ve.com

Hillary is sliding in the polls. Drastically. I’m watching a panel of pundits eviscerate her on camera performance, while praising Trump, Sanders and even Joe Biden’s recent appearance where he got emotional on a talk show. Performance matters.

Regardless of your message, if you can’t deliver it with heartfelt passion and conviction you will pay dearly. She is seen here delivering a line she’s delivered dozens of times on the road and still keeps looking down even during sure fire applause lines.

The camera is merciless. It only shows what it sees. Nothing more (well, maybe a little weight) and can show considerably less. It’s a two dimensional view that needs the on camera talent’s projection and participation.

Being on camera is a harsh reality but critical if you need your audience to know who you are and what you stand for. Even for someone whose been in politics for thirty or forty years, if your performance is lacking and you can’t push through that screen and move people it can hurt you. Fatally.

You can be the brightest man or woman in the room but if you lack the will or ability to share it either live or on camera you will lose.

I can never understand the gun shy executives who shy away or say they “hate” being on camera especially if they’re an international company with employees scattered all over the world and little chance for them to meet in one place. They have to be coaxed and prodded and reminded they have a responsibility to their organization. Sometimes I say to myself when I’m relating the benefits of an on camera opportunity, “Why am I doing this and why should I have to?”

Then I see a half-hearted performance, produced with with a cheapo camera and lousy audio and I shake my head. More damage than good. I’ve been experiencing this for 15 years and thought attitudes would have changed by now but they haven’t for the most part.

Just phone it in, get it over with. I stopped trying after a while and when someone reaches out I have a series of questions I ask to make sure the person is committed and especially not self deluded. I’m in this game for more than money.

My “why” is communication, the kind that makes a difference, that enlightens and moves people. Some of the garbage I see rolled out as inspirational or motivational is laughable at best and destructive at worst.

Someone needs to talk to the emperor.

If you have any questions or need advice, please feel free to reach out to me here.

Bob O’Hearn
508-517-6714
bo*@*************ve.com

I can’t hear a word they’re sayin’

When I was a little kid in an insanely loud and crowded family of twelve, all jammed together on the second floor of a converted three family house my father owned, with cousins on the first, and my grandmother on the third, it was inevitable that one of us  would contract something outside and bring it home to infect the rest of us. The whole pack would be taken down within hours.

There were raging fevers with bodies everywhere. I never thought about how dangerously sick we really were back then. My mother could barely keep up with the moaning, the vomit and the runs. If she was sick, we never knew it. It was always about us.

In my fevered state I would have a recurring dream of being surrounded by people in my sphere of influence, father, mother, brother, the local cop, a nun and some relatives. They would surround me and their faces would blow up like balloons. They were making a soundless scream like noise I couldn’t hear but could feel. A tremendous pressure enclosed on me as their faces grew bigger.

Their mouths were moving but nothing came out. You could feel the silence. They were all trying to get me to do something but I couldn’t understand what it was. It was too intense. It was crazy. It would usually frighten me into consciousness. That dream sequence stayed with me for years. Some psychologist would have a ball with that scenario.

I was reminded of that fever like state when my browser locked up for the fourth time as video after video tried to play at once and pop-ups populated the screen. Everyone is screaming at me. It’s manic urgency is yelling at me again, frantically. Look, over here, no, over here. Don’t miss out, hurry, it’s gonna end at midnight. You can proceed in 15 seconds after we jam our unwanted and totally irrelevant message down your throat.

Sometimes a video will load and start playing 15 minutes later when I’m in another room and scare the hell out of me. I’m surrounded again. I’m overwhelmed and nothing makes sense.

So who thinks this is a good idea? Who thinks that pelting people will make them pay attention to you? Attention is currency and it’s not easily given. Not today. I’m looking at my e-mail spam catcher and I have 465 worthless, stupid messages since I booted up two hours ago. That e-mail account is useless to me now. I only keep it in case an old client uses it to reach out to me. I have to quickly peruse this madness so I don’t miss something important. It’s such a waste of time.

Pelting, that’s what it is. It’s that feverish state all over again. Everyone is screaming and nothing’s coming out. The senses have to shut down in order to maintain a semblance of sanity. So this is the environment we’ve created to move our audiences? Yeah, just throw a rock over a big wooden fence and hope it hits something?

It’s never gonna end. You are being forced into a defensive position. Trust no one. Like a speakeasy, what’s the password? Sadly, a lot of valuable, well meaning information will be in the toilet flush of spam catchers and pop up blockers. As time goes on you will be forced to narrow your focus and speak to a smaller audience whose trust you’ve gained by giving them something every time you interrupt them.

It had better be good and not all about you. You will have to be a resource and a font of useful information or it’s overboard you go. “No, I didn’t get your message, must have hit my spam folder”.

If you have any questions or need advice, please feel free to reach out to me here.

Bob O’Hearn
508-517-6714
bo*@*************ve.com

This new opportunity, which has just come up, is one I’m really excited about. Imagine selling products to your customer and creating a promotional video and providing strategy about their business using your product. Everybody wins. Getting real estate on your customer’s web page? Who could ask for anything more?

I did this for years as a sales rep in Arizona until the home office brought me inside and built me a studio. That was almost 14 years ago. I do video production and e-strategy to enhance the business. This approach creates a real partnership. An added benefit other companies don’t provide or would even know how to approach. Close the deal and move on. So much for customer intimacy.

What a cool way to team up with a company. Sell them a product or service and then be able to help them effectively reach their audience using your digital experience. Some folks can make widgets, but they have no idea on the creative marketing.

First: a little backstory. When I took a sales position with Dupont Radiopharmaceuticals, I had already spent years as a professional chef, a musician and an erstwhile stand up comedian. What did that background have to do with selling isotopes? Plenty, as it turns out. Being of sound body and creative mind I looked for ways to differentiate myself from the competition. In 1999, I started shooting patient education videos for existing and potential clients.

The videos were educational, promotional and of course, branded. They took my customer relationships to a whole new level. My company, Bristol-Myers Squibb also made a generic version of my video called “Taking the Test” and put them out in VHS and DVD for everyone in our market.

Word spread like wildfire and customers even started to call my house. Competition started calling my company. They didn’t feel it was fair. Oh, well. When was the last time a cardiologist called your house? I was getting pretty popular. Started getting calls from reps that wanted to gain or maintain business all over the west. Even created newsletters for Kaiser Permanente, “The Hot Spot”.

This is definitely an unusual offering, but can be very effective in most businesses. A few years ago I created a bunch of informational videos for GPOs, (group purchasing organizations) for a medical imaging company. I wonder if they realized the power of gaining that real estate inside these organizations. I wonder too, if they enhanced that opportunity.

For me, this is the way in. If you want to partner with a customer, help them grow their business and reap the benefits, you need to have some creative chops. In my time in the field, I created and managed web sites, newsletters and produced many patient education videos using a company approved script.

I even bought up every domain name of every targeted account in my territory before they even knew what a web site was. I still get calls from time to time asking me to relinquish a url I had forgotten about.

It’s a “value added proposition” for sure and might not be a fit for everyone, but when you bring solutions to improve their business to the table, be it e-strategy, video and increased global presence you’re always welcome.

If you have any questions or need advice, please feel free to reach out to me here.

Bob O’Hearn
508-517-6714
bo*@*************ve.com

You know you’re gonna get your drawers pulled down when the creative agency you use has more employees than you do! – The Enlightened Rogue.

This is a shot of my home studio. This is where I do smaller, more intimate work for small business owners, entrepreneurs and folks looking to give a prospective employer a taste of who they’ll be interviewing without taking a shaky selfie with horrible audio. I’ve helped a lot of folks in this room and it’s by far my favorite kind of work. It’s why I got into this business in the first place.

I waited years for the web to be able handle high quality video so as to make that all important first impression for my clients and friends. Human drone strikes, if you will. The next best thing to being there. Shows initiative, creativity and your savvy in getting ahead of the pack.

The real work comes in when you have a job candidate who has never been in front of a camera speaking extemporaneously or reading from a teleprompter. There’s a lot of psychological coaching, fits and starts and numerous takes but I don’t let them leave until I get the goods. Always get the goods. My job is to make them look good. My only job.

This is by far, the most rewarding part of what I do. After a full throated effort to pull the message out of your talent (which of course, you always hoped was in there) the two of you are never the same again. It’s symbiotic.

You’ve maneuvered your way through all the twists and turns, missteps, garbled sentences, unplanned look aways and the struggles to deliver, but you’ve made it. CUT!

Small wonder they hesitate to get in the bull ring in the first place. It’s leveling and sometimes humbling but your message has to get out there. The world has to know who you are. On-line.

The fun comes later when passing in the hallway and winking, knowing you’ve both been through a difficult but worthy process and given your best.

If you have any questions or need advice, please feel free to reach out to me here.

Bob O’Hearn
508-517-6714
bo*@*************ve.com

If you see ads like this, run!

Are you employee number 1? Were you the first one in? In other words, did you start this business by your onesies? I mean, are you the owner? That’s what I’m getting at. Did you say “well, it seemed like a good idea at the time, but now the big dogs are eating my lunch” because even though I have a great product I ran out of money when it came to the critical ingredient: MARKETING, the on-line variety. The only kind that matters. Do you drive a car with no wheels? Is your livelihood dependent on yellow pages and drive time radio? Are you watching this on your way to a soup kitchen?

I see the same mistakes over and over again. Big corporations will cut staff, benefits, 401Ks, quality and free coffee but they live by “Never cut your marketing”. Maybe you think your product will sell itself. Maybe you just have to mosey over to the window sill and water it once a week. Pretty soon you’re gonna have to belly up to the bar and get your mug out there cause there is no free lunch.

There is too much abundance out there for your service or product to sell itself. You have to shake ’em up, make some noise, let ’em know you’re in the room. That takes face time and I’m not talking about the Bob’s Furniture Variety or the Wareham Lobster House kind. Are those not dreadful?

You need a personal appeal to your audience of why you got into this business with b-roll (without all the shaky zooms, please) to provide the type of imagery that will let your existing or potential customer or client know you are the real deal.

Sounds simple, right? Well, actually it’s not. You need more than video, you need a presence, and that takes a tasteful, permission based, comprehensive relationship building approach. We do that.

If anyone will be the face of your business, it should be you. We help with that. We coach, plan and strategize with you to get you to come through the lens to reach and move your audience. We don’t do hostage tapes, sorry.

If you are one of those weenies who has to tinkle when the tally light goes on, we work with you to overcome that. Business is people. People to people. You get that, right? Or else why would you put your kids college fund up for grabs.

Look, if you want to be seen and heard, if you want to differentiate your offering, this is the way to do it. Whether it’s condoms or truck tires, or condoms as big as truck tires, we can get your message out there using all of the video and social media available. I have sold, marketed and produced for some of the largest companies in the world and I still see the same self indulgent, epoch, all about me mistakes. Don’t do that, call me. I can help you.

You know what they say in Vegas? No balls, no blue chips. Let’s sell somethin’!

You want chips with that?

If you have any questions or need advice, please feel free to reach out to me here.

Bob O’Hearn
508-517-6714
bo*@*************ve.com

The Big Picture.

I just closed it up with a group that I have been doing business with for the last four years. I have decided to forego “one off” businesses that think of video production like sending out for pizza. It’s a check box-catch all-cya, that is a nice to have instead of a must have. Pity.

They load sometimes hours and hours of head nodding meandering technical “hey, if you couldn’t make the meetings” into a cyber void and call it “mission accomplished”. “Hey, we may as well”.

Some of this stuff is valuable, very valuable, strategic and worthy of an NDA or confidentiality agreement. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve offered to sign one many times but they just wave me off. I guess video is not the same as being there.

My usual interaction is with someone they deem “event planners” who are actually administrative assistants and are usually way out of the loop when it comes to how an event should be covered and what’s critically important.

Any ideas outside the box, or improvisational approaches, that could enhance, not up sell, the production, befuddled them and was sometimes met with confusion, stress and anxiety. And anger. So I try to keep it simple instead of asking if I can speak to mommy or daddy.

Some of these companies hire kids right out of schools that major in TV broadcasting and think they’ve got their multimedia end covered. This is where they find out the difference between a videographer and a video producer.

They assign them to work with me on projects because of their perceived grasp of the technical end. Well, they might fit in down at the local cable company, but they certainly didn’t get a real world education of the big picture. Hope they didn’t take out a hefty student loan.

I had a kid right out of Hofstra University who used to oversleep an 11:00 am shoot. He could offload footage and focus a camera but we always had to keep an eye on him. There’s a lot of blood, sweat and tears in his future.

I recently had someone e-mail me and ask if they could get us to shoot a “quick” video of the CEO out to the troops because he travels so frequently and he needs some face time with his peeps. This was on a Friday morning, so before responding, I called around to one of my guys to see if he could get into town that afternoon. He said he could and I told him to stand by. I got back to her and said we could do it that afternoon before the CEO left for the west coast.

She got back to me and said they wanted his video shot in two months, when he was back in town. Guess he didn’t need that much face time.

If you have any questions or need advice, please feel free to reach out to me here.

Bob O’Hearn
508-517-6714
bo*@*************ve.com

And now…back to CNN..

For the record, 57 minutes of CNN and three minutes of amateur slides with an emergency phone number in the wrong aspect ratio is not digital signage. – Enlightened Rogue

I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night with recurring visions of an exploding TV set with the caption “You are watching M.I.T.V… and now…back to CNN.” That was a bumper I created in 2005. For ten years I created content for a medical imaging company that was at first, Bristol Myers Squibb and then morphed into Lantheus Medical Imaging. I created the content, but I didn’t program it, and that’s where the long, slow descent into employee torture began.

It started off with good intentions, but actually the digital signage project was a budget dump to make it look like we were being creative to the mother ship in New Jersey. The CEO casually mentioned CNN in the MITV (medical imaging television) introduction video and it’s still probably stuck on CNN today.

They put large TV screens on every floor in every building on a 200 acre campus. There was no escape. When the content started to dry up, which was out of my control, the death threats started rolling in. They put suggestion boxes under each screen with slips of paper and a chained down pen. You should have been in the room when they started reading those anonymous missives off. There were gasps and “Oh my Gods” to beat the band.

I remember at one point, having lunch in the cafeteria and watching three pieces I had done play back to back, over and over, an IT Minute, an on site driving safety video and the exploding TV with a cue back to CNN but no CNN. Just those three pieces, with volume. Loud. Ever looping. I was sitting there feeling my face getting red, when I looked up to see a group of very unhappy employees surrounding my table. If looks could kill. They all said in unison, BOB!!!

They didn’t know I had no control over the programming. What was produced and received very well at first was now a blight and reason to use foul language on those suggestion slips. That felt terrible. It was futile though, the person who had control was an ex code monkey that was way out of her element. A control freak to boot. People started shutting them off on their own and warning signs had to be placed: “Do Not Shut Off.”  So much for creativity.

What you’ve just read is the exact story I tell any client that’s considering moving to digital signage and wanting me to spearhead the effort. You better think long and hard about strategy and commitment before you leap. I have three companies now that are very serious about moving forward. One just purchased forty, forty inch screens and think they’re going to play themselves. No clue. I’m wondering who signed the purchase order and why they’re still working there.

Now, I did this type of work for more than ten years and I can tell you right here and now, the pitfalls are legion. There are so many critically important things to consider but I’m not going to put them here. You have to pay me for that. Not as much as the poor soul who purchased those forty screens though.

If you are considering digital signage, give me a call or buy a digital loop of a goldfish tank and soothe your employees into productivity. Better than a blank screen, or worse, the stock market tanking, riots, ISIS and natural disasters, courtesy of CNN, to take back to your desk with you, you betcha.

If you have any questions or need advice, please feel free to reach out to me here.

Bob O’Hearn
508-517-6714
bo*@*************ve.com

I have a friend who I’ve worked with for over 25 years who is a marketing manager at a floundering medical imaging company up here in the north east. I just saw his profile on LinkedIn and he has a total of one, that’s 1, with a capital uno, connections on his profile. He’s still in his early sixties, and my thinking is, he’s going to hang on tooth an nail, come hell or high water.

If he does get the boot, he will have to be escorted off the property at gun point, or we’re looking at a possible hostage crisis. I love that guy but he needs to snort some Starbucks. Not that LinkedIn is any help but at least it shows you’re looking to play when the whip come down.

I don’t know what your LinkedIn feed looks like, but mine has turned into Animal Planet, National Geographic and helpful hints from HR managers on how to impress them at job interviews by doing everything except crawling under their desk. Their motto is: “Just be anyone but you.” Contortionists and shape shifters welcome.

I wonder sometimes why I even bother with LinkedIn, except to find out where someone in my sphere has moved, or all of a sudden turned into (Your Name Here) Consulting Group. All you’re really doing most of the time, is telling the world you are unemployed. But there is a guy that I’m linked to that clocks in about a half a dozen times a day with some pretty good information.

It’s not his original thinking, it’s links to articles that shows he’s got some skin in the game. So I check out his profile and it’s very impressive. He has a lot of experience in sales, marketing, HR and has a passion for “anything biotech” as he says. I like people like that.

So I send him a note and tell him he has a great story, a lot of drive and ask if he has a blog somewhere that I can subscribe to. I’m sure he’s a font of worthwhile information, wisdom and experience. His response set me back on my heels. Not only did he not have a blog or a web page but he had no earthly idea what he would even write about.

News flash! These are different times. Diogenes ain’t gonna come ringing your doorbell with a lamp looking for an honest man. Put up or shut up or get under that HR guy’s desk with the rest of them. No one is looking for you. No one is waiting for you to show up at their reception desk. Uploading your resume is like farting in a wind storm.

The only job “openings” are the people interviewing you. You are just a way to kill a morning. Interview is a relative term. These people get paid to torture you for a full or half day.

One of those cruelest techniques I’ve seen is to give you a full, excruciating, in depth, mostly mind boggling, tour of the facility first, then take you to lunch (on the company dime) and then when you are worn out, the interview goes south in the first ten minutes because they never even asked you any pertinent questions. While you’re fighting for consciousness, they tell you they will be in touch then walk you to the elevator.

Like a guided tour of Disney Land, this guy has done this hundreds of times. They already got most of what they want to know about you from Google.

Look, if you know how to do something, anything, that isn’t company specific, meaning it’s transferable and valuable, then get savvy and start pimping yourself off.

Be the Lone Ranger without the Tonto. Start massaging your skill set into an offering that will help you sustain life here on planet earth. The womb to the tomb just left the room.

Be out standing in your field!

If you have any questions or need advice, please feel free to reach out to me here.

Bob O’Hearn
508-517-6714
bo*@*************ve.com

“This is your future”

I don’t usually lead with the punchline first but in this case it’s necessary. Turn away now if you don’t like ribald humor. I’ll give you the joke, then the analogy and why it’s 2003 all over again.

Here’s the joke:

Two life long bosom buddies go on a camping trip to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. They lug enough supplies for an overnight, plus a case of beer. That night, they’re sitting around the camp fire swilling down the beer and one of them has to relieve himself. He wanders into the brush and while exposed, is bitten in the private parts by a poisonous snake.

He yells for his friend, who quickly sees the problem and tells his friend to lay still while he gets a doctor. He climbs all the way out of the canyon in the dark for his life long companion and finds a small emergency room near the rim and runs in screaming for help.

There’s only one doctor on duty and the guy hysterically explains his friend’s misfortune. The doctor says he can’t leave, because he’s going to deliver a baby any minute. He tells him the only alternative is to suck the venom out of the bitten area or else his friend will die. The friend hurriedly returns to the bottom of the canyon and finds his bitten buddy barely hanging on. The fading friend asks if he had found a doctor and the other guy says yes. When the victim asks his friend what the doctor said, his best friend says, “Yer gonna die”.

The Analogy:

Now, you’re probably thinking, how is this relevant? In my business, the only thing missing is the snake. I am usually called in to help organizations that are in “trouble mode” and they need a strategy to reach and keep an on-line audience, or else they will die.

Like any good doctor I ask a lot of questions before I give a diagnosis. I listen and I listen. I ask open ended questions and look at what they have in place already and for the most part, we may as well be sitting around the camp fire. These are who I have labelled “sleepwalkers”. They are just going through the motions when it comes to reaching out on-line. The only action that will take place is the meeting itself.

They blast away, carpet bomb and rub each other’s bellies, then puke up outrageous numbers at marketing meetings but they have no idea what the real results are. They host market research meetings in big cities with the usual suspects and get the usual answers but the numbers aren’t changing. This, they find mystifying. How can this be?, they ask “We sent out 9,000 e-mails and got 9 responses.”

When I tell them what they need to do in terms of strategy and resources, I may as well be saying “Yer gonna die”, because they’re not going to do it.

Back to looking for your car keys under a street light when you lost them in the garage, just because there’s more light out there.

Like waking a sleep walker suddenly, which isn’t advised, the truth doesn’t ever set anyone free. At least, not in my experience. Maybe if you fly a bunch of clowns up from Madison Avenue, they pull your pants down and steal your wallet, your mileage may vary, but most folks will just go back to doing what they’ve always done and getting what they always got. More market research, more navel gazing and pitch meetings but the real work will always be right there under their nose.

Why it’s 2003 all over again:

I’ll never forget that day in 2003, when I called a meeting to roll out “Outbreak”, the e-mail marketing campaign that would go “viral” and the responses I got from my sleepwalking, dinosaur friends. The body language and silence told it all. Folded arms, confused looks and then the inevitable questions designed to confuse the issue so they could crawl back inside their protective wombs and relieve their discomfort.

Comments like “creepy” and “control” or the lack thereof. But the real deal breaker was, it wasn’t their idea. I handed out copies of Seth Godin’s “The Ideavirus” which were left on the table after the meeting. The CEO and the lump they had running the sales force, folded their arms so hard you could hear their elbows cracking. Not much has changed, sad to say. I never in my life experienced thicker foreheads from supposedly educated people. Oh, and their branding was “Innovators at Heart”. Right. Go on with your bad self.

Used to be, I would dance with you if you paid the fiddler, but I’m far too cautious now to come in and warm up one of your conference room chairs, go round and round and pretend we don’t see the problem. If you’re too squeamish to deal with the venom, well, you know the consequences.

If you have any questions or need advice, please feel free to reach out to me here.

Bob O’Hearn
508-517-6714
bo*@*************ve.com

Does your E-Marketing Strategy look like this?

Blast! Every time I hear that word associated with an on-line marketing campaign I want to excuse myself, head to the men’s room and scream into the bowl. There’s no excuse in this day and age to bomb blindly into an audience that is not your intended target and worse, not expecting it.

This is a modern day mortar team. The guys dropping those rounds into the tube have no idea where that baby is going. That’s why they have that guy on the left working the co-ordinates, getting feedback and getting the team to keep making adjustments to zero in or “walk” the mortar or message, into the desired zone. It takes patience and a clearly defined target to accomplish your mission. Can’t tell some folks that though, “let’s get a list and blast the shit out of them, someone has to take the bait”!

An empty message and an itchy trigger finger will blow up in your face every time. If you do zero in on the proper audience and are able to hit your mark, you need to do damage assessment, meaning analyze how effective your delivery was and what type of ammunition you might need on the next assault. Don’t get trigger happy.

E-Marketing should be a coordinated strategy that should include everyone in the sales and marketing organization. It must be permission based with everyone in the huddle. You need sales to acquire the e-mail addresses and promise your customer it will not be abused. The content should be specific to every segment of your business that you’re trying to move.

Each time you reach out and interrupt  your customer you better have something valuable and specific to them (not yourself). You are trying to build a dialogue, so don’t go beating your chest too early or they’ll drop off the hook. Once that bird has flown, it ain’t coming back.

The heavy lifting comes in the form of making sure you’re talking to the right people and delivering content that they will spread virally and grow your base. That’s why it’s important to to start with a smaller target. If your messaging is on target and more information based, they will share this valuable information and end up selling for you.

But creating compelling content, analyzing feedback and creating cheer leaders is not easy. It takes a wide view and a deliberate mindset to create communities that will welcome your messaging. But it’s hard to tell some companies that. Remember, you’re dating, you don’t walk into a bar and ask someone to marry you. Do you?

Find out their specific interests and play to those with information they will appreciate and share with their friends and associates. Don’t clobber them with the gift of you. They want to embrace you, not endure you.

If you have any questions or need advice, please feel free to reach out to me here.

Bob O’Hearn
508-517-6714
bo*@*************ve.com

The Catharsis

Cleaning my closet is my metaphor for hitting the reset button. Fresh start. Clean slate. Get organized, get over myself. “When it’s all I can stands and I can’t stands no more” as Popeye would say. Usually after a traumatic, life changing event.

I caught myself in the act years ago. Having just ended an agonizing short term affair, I found myself in the deep end of my walk-in closet straightening, moving, discarding and brooding over how I fell asleep at the wheel of life. Pondering whether I let myself get ensnared in these go nowhere relationships and career mishaps on purpose, so I wouldn’t have to settle in and be one of them. You know, a normal person.

By then I had realized this is what I have always done, a mental toilet flush. Rearrange the closet, the furniture, move, change jobs, chop my beard or find another mentally deranged birdie with a broken wing to block out the last fiasco. That was the drill. I don’t remember what I did when I was drinking for obvious reasons. Maybe just more of the same. But the closets, those were to go-to prescription. The first step in the next step. Then, send in the clowns again.

I think entering sales in my mid-40s, single and relocating to the other side of the country brought me face to face with…me. I owned a home but was never there. Had lots of friends that I hardly ever saw and a manager who only lived in my inbox.

I spent 13 years in Arizona and in all that time I never really had a tight connection with more than one or two people. Well meaning people would fix me up with friends of theirs that they considered a perfect match for me. Some of these collisions were so off the mark that it made me wonder if there was something wrong with me that I wasn’t aware of.

To add to the complexity, the only friends I had out there were customers and usually valuable ones so I would have to play along. At least until I could figure a way out lest I disappoint and suffer more than one kind of loss. I told one I thought I was bi-sexual. In the middle of the AIDS crisis that bird had flown.

Usually I found a way to wiggle out of these mismatches but never totally unscathed. It was usually a huge sigh of relief, then, back to the closet. Vowing to stay on my toes until the next well meaning doomed encounter.

Sometimes it was company worries. Something disruptive or crude I would say at a company meeting to get a laugh (and usually did) followed by a management sit down. Those were the worst. You never knew what they were saying about you back at the ranch. Most folks thought I never gave a shit. But I did. Self inflicted torture and loneliness in the desert moonlight.

I hated the weekends. I had no anchor, no family and usually no plans. When the plane would touch down late on Friday night at Sky Harbor all I had to look forward to was an hour ride home and a wide open two days until I could get back in the saddle. At some point, I started taking Saturday morning flights home and Sunday evening departures to break up the weekend.The rest of the time I spent hiking, mall walking and perusing book stores. It wouldn’t be long though, before the next emotional package would land on my door step. Plop!

I am at that point now but it’s different. I’m older, wiser, suffer fools less lightly, speak my mind more forcefully and don’t want to spend a moment enduring someone else’s bullshit. That ought to put me in demand in corporate America, right?  I have a wonderful marriage and as you can guess, a very patient and loving wife and partner. We have a successful business but it’s more draining and paining lately and our last fiasco was it for me. Time for a change.

Some folks think life is like bobbing for french fries. You have to endure the pain to get the gain. I don’t. I always enjoy what I do, or I don’t do it. It’s just that I don’t know yet what to do at the moment that will check that box.

But, back to the ritual, my closet. Better call the dumpster.

If you have any questions or need advice, please feel free to reach out to me here.

Bob O’Hearn
508-517-6714
bo*@*************ve.com

“OK, everyone, I want to thank you all for flying in on such short notice for this extremely critical meeting. I never would have pulled you from your day to day operations if necessity didn’t demand it.”

“You are all the key leaders in your given area of expertise and your in-person contribution today will hopefully right the ship and give us an upper hand with our newly formed competition. We must act fast and we must act now.”

“Before we get started and while Peggy hands out the newly updated release forms and non-disclosure agreements, I will tell you that everything that is said or done in this room, stays in this room.”

“You are not to share any of this information with family, friends or associates. Disclosure could open us up to a whole host of stock holder and legal issues. The competition would have a field day with us. If anything from this room hits the streets it could mean your careers. Seriously”

“We will be recording this entire meeting so it can be uploaded to a secure, password protected server and will be for your eyes only. The board will also have access so let’s get to it.”

“Any questions? Huh? Who? That guy over there? Relax, he doesn’t have to sign anything, he’s just the camera guy” “Ha ha ha ha ha ………. ha?”

If you have any questions or need advice, please feel free to reach out to me here.

Bob O’Hearn
508-517-6714
bo*@*************ve.com

Ok, all you Video – ographers listen up. It’s over. Done. Finished. Kaput. You have been reduced to playing “Angry Birds” behind a pair of sticks that used to hold your camera up. You used to be able to turn “Pink Flamingos” into “Love Story.” Eastwood couldn’t touch you back in the day.

Remember when your biggest barrier to success was the bride’s mother and the portly cherub of a bride-to-be who begged you to take thirty pounds off her in post? Oh, that was nothing. Now you have 40 dickheads with iPhones getting better shots than you because you were sober and you couldn’t get your rig into the ladies room. I was at a wedding once where the cameraman was pushing a Sony 250 in a shopping cart trying to create a motion shot.

I did a few weddings when I first started. At first, you think it’s cool. You wear a tux and mingle with all the chicks dressed up for each other. After about the 13-14th hour it starts to wear thin and then there’s the two month edit that goes back and forth, back and forth. If you’re lucky, the bride’s father won’t insert himself into the action (after all, he’s paying, he’ll mention a thousand times) “I’m seeing the groom’s father is getting way too much face time, get him out of there. I’m payin’ ya know”.

The first wedding I ever did was helping my friend Mike do a Greek wedding in Watertown. Mike was up on a pedestal in plain view of the whole church when he starts falling asleep. That should have been my first clue. It didn’t go any better from there. I was supposed to create an instant edit in a coatroom at the Royal Sonesta reception hall and lost 10 years off my life.

Sometimes, if the brides are feeling frisky, they invite you over to their house before the ceremony and you capture footage of them getting prepped: hair, nails, eyes, makeup and sometimes into their bedroom where they really want to iron your wrinkles out. I think some of them popped the cork early because if they had a pole in that room, it would have paid for the honeymoon.

Some were very sexy, some, not so much. Someone shot some footage of an extremely huge black girl in her bedroom in her Victoria Secrets (think sling shot) gyrating to some jungle music and played it at this guy Hal’s 60th birthday party. That was too much, even for me, so I snuk out the back door and picked up an application for my gay card and went home. Jesus up in Heaven help me!

So I moved over to the corporate side of the street where I thought the lunacy levels would be less intense. But that’s for another day. But I will leave you with an e-mail I just got from a PR agency, usually an AA who calls herself an account associate.

She was looking for me to cover a ribbon cutting ceremony in Waltham, send her the feetage so she could pick out the “snips” she needed.  Snips. Yeah, I getcha!

If you have any questions or need advice, please feel free to reach out to me here.

Bob O’Hearn
508-517-6714
bo*@*************ve.com

Like grief, the harder you try to run from it the more it descends upon you. I always use the example of the Chinese bamboo finger puzzle. You put a finger in each end of the bamboo tube and when you try to pull out, the tube contracts leaving you trapped. The trick is to push in, release the contraction and free yourself. Sounds counter-intuitive but it works. Sometimes our businesses suffer severe trauma that convince us we’re trapped. Truth be told, we are.

Like air turbulence in a plane, a quick bump and it’s over. Sometimes it’s a long slow, agonizing process to get back on your feet again. Then, whether you like it or not, you’re forced to face your fears and insecurities head on. And that can be a good thing as long as you don’t have to sell your house and buy an ice cream truck.

Nobody hates mushy crappola business talk more than me. I actually gag when I hear some of the re-hashed bromides these so-called business gurus spew forth to make a few bucks off your bewildered ass. Truth is, is when you’re in the middle of a shit storm is when the lessons get learned as long as your taking notes and not xanax. Lean into it. Get yourself all dirty and nasty and wrestle that pig to the ground.

If, and that’s a big if, you survive, you will get those Clint Eastwood – John Wayne, Chinese eyes with lots of notches on their belts and stories they won’t ever talk about.

You will be missing some things you didn’t need in the first place like a trusting nature and a gullible outlook. In its place you will gain a healthy cynicism and a ground in tendency to trust your intuition. Always. Stay awake during your trial by fire lest you miss the whole learning experience. Wallow in it!

I am gritting my teeth while writing this. My stomach hurts and I want to put my hands on someone. I want to wreak some havoc and exact my revenge. I don’t think I would be a pleasant cell mate so I will forego the urge for destruction. Instead, I have a notebook in every room of my house to capture my frantic, vengeful, thoughts, feelings and primal urges. What your reading now is part of my wallowing.

 I’m not looking forward to the day when this will end because I don’t know if it will. All I know is this is where I am right now. Now! Let’s see who emerges from this slop!

If you have any questions or need advice, please feel free to reach out to me here.

Bob O’Hearn
508-517-6714
bo*@*************ve.com

 I own my own business. It can give you a sense of accomplishment, freedom, independence, creativity and that “entrepreneur” word that I have started to gag on.
It can also be a dangerous proposition, especially if you are a creative.

It used to be, that if a large international company gave you the shaft, you had no recourse but to lay back and take it. Not so today. Social media can kill.

Leadership: the action of leading a group of people or an organization. There are different styles of leadership and they vary greatly. Some work from the ground up and the others from the top down. Meaning that the term “leadership” is in the eyes of the beholder. It is one of the most abused and misunderstood labels in the business world.

Are you a good leader because you can make someone do something? Are you a good leader because your group or team performs in an exemplary manner and your superiors think it was your leadership style that made it all happen? Can you lead your horses to water? Can your horses lead you to water?

I’ve seen some pretty fine people be awarded for their skills and example setting and I’ve also seen some low life arm twisters and self centered extortionists get the same recognition. It degraded the honor.

I have also been fortunate enough to have people report to me that I would follow anywhere.

When I was in Vietnam in ’68, just before the TET Offensive, I had about three months left in country. We were a grizzled, hardened bunch by then. When we were back at base camp we cut the sleeves off of our jungle fatigues, didn’t lace up our boots and hardly ever put a razor to our face.

About that time, we were awarded a brand spanking new 2nd Lieutenant fresh from stateside. He was lily white, wore brand new freshly starched fatigues and even spit shined his jungle boots. OMG! Oh, he was a site to behold, probably 25 and fresh out of OCS.

There were three of us passing by him that morning, me and a couple of characters from New Jersey. We all said “Good morning sir” and kept walking. He yelled for us to stop right there and approached us. He said, “you men forget how to salute an officer?” By then we had. This was a whole other planet compared to where he came from. Murphy said, “you’re kidding, right?”

Lt. Harris lost it and told all three of us to drop and give him twenty five. Twenty five push ups like in basic training. We all start moaning “c’mon man, you can’t be serious.” He was. Now at the time, we were under the influence of a vast amount of Cambodian weed and we get down in the push up position. This quickly becomes hysterical. I did maybe three before I collapsed in the dirt laughing uncontrollably.

Now we are drawing a crowd. The rest of the company comes out of their tents to see what all the commotion is about. Meanwhile, our new “second louie” is threatening a court martial and a firing squad. Finally, he had to dismiss us because he was embarrassing himself but he was our sworn enemy from that moment on. He made us salute him every time we saw him. The other officers just shook their heads.

Until.

We headed up a large convoy with supplies for our sister battalion up north. We had Korean troops along to help with security and everyone was loaded for bear. We were told to expect trouble. It was a long haul and we had to stop quite a few times to check gear and coordinates.

Lt. Harris yelled out for me to run up to his jeep for something and when I arrived I reflexively snapped him a salute. He freaked. “Don’t you know you’re not supposed to salute an officer in the field?” He was right, it tells enemy snipers who the boss is. That ain’t good. Soon the word spread that we had found a way to get to him. And we did. Poor bastard.

It was not an uneventful trip. We endured our share of terror but we made it back safely. That night our buddy stopped by our hooch as we were getting high, drinking and listening to “Give me a ticket for an airplane…” He sat down and joined us. We had a blast. He was a little stiff at first but we grew to love him. (He was a dork, though) The mutual respect we grew to have made him worthy of the leadership mantle we bestowed on him.

We spent the rest of the time in country doing all we could to make him look good and garner respect from his fellow officers. He was our leader. Don’t fuck with him.

Fast forward forty five years and I’m standing in my boss’s office and he’s asking me why I devoted some of my time and energy to a video project the R&D group wanted produced for their annual celebration. Why would you do something for those guys, they don’t have any direct impact on what we’re doing?

I said, “they will, and I will be looking for their help.” He told me at my level in the company, I could just tell them to do it.” I said, “sure, but I want them to want to do it.” He looked at me with a puzzled look and said “whatever,” and I left.

Real leadership is hard to define but I can only tell you from my experience: you’ll know it when you see it.

Where’s my stuff?

 One of the more frequent requests I get from clients is to get out in the field and capture “A Day In the Life” of the sales organization. The reason this approach is so effective is that it helps in-house employees see the big picture and shows how what they do on a daily basis impacts the company, the customer and their own job security.

Having  spent a great deal of my career in sales, I can tell you first hand it’s not for the faint of heart. We can be the most neurotic, anxious and superstitious group of paranoids on the planet. You always have to have something going on and that means putting on a happy face in dire situations, especially when management wants to hear a good story. They always want to hear a good story. They want you to “always be closing.”

You have so many balls in the air you need to be half lawyer and half ballerina because someone in-house will mess up an order and pull your pants down. They won’t feel the impact of that error directly so an opportunity to reinforce their critical role in the company is lost. That’s why, if you can’t get them out in the field, you bring the show to them to give them a tour of the battle field.

They think you ride around in a nice car all day, tell jokes, wear nice clothes and pick up the tab in fancy restaurants. They don’t know about the sleepless nights at a Best Western in Deming, New Mexico.

I sold radiopharmaceuticals, where a missed order and even a few hour delay could wreak havoc. The isotopes were pre-calibrated for use that day and patients could be coming from quite a distance. This is where I learned tap dancing. You better have plan A, B and C ready to rock. Back then, you knew where every pay phone in the territory was located. Workin’ for the CYA.

I started my career at Dupont Radiopharmaceuticals in the distribution group and really had no idea what this stuff was used for. I knew generally, but not specifically. While filling in at a satellite distribution center, I missed an order that shut Phoenix down for the whole day and then some.

Our distributors were helpless and the competition low balled them right out of the picture. Huge accounts vanished into thin air. I knew I screwed up but never realized how badly until I showed up six months later as the rep and had to endure all the stories about “that clown in Dupont distribution.” (Glad no one ever gave my name)

The process I use is to interview the rep and use their story as a voice over to b-roll of them in action. Capture them interacting with customers, distributors and clinical support if that’s the case. Get him or her to discuss the importance of the quality and reliability of the product, it’s specific use(s) and what the competition might be like. Having them discuss pre-call planning and their overall general strategy can prove helpful also.

Fortunately (for them) in house employees will never have to to stand there in front of a furious (and threatening) customer,  be dressed down and berated because the product or service has “shit the bed”, but I will get them as close as possible. They’ll get everything but the flop sweat.

The rep also has to be in the loop as to how the internal process functions. But that’s another project.

If you have any questions or need advice, please feel free to reach out to me here.

Bob O’Hearn
508-517-6714
bo*@*************ve.com

You betrayed me. You lied and misled me. When you first proposed to me you told me I was special. You swept me off my feet. You took a vow to always place me high above you. There was a ray of hope and promise in our relationship. You had some things I needed and I had some things you needed. A match made in heaven. You told me that you would never compromise our trust by violating our sacred agreement.

But as time went on you grew distant, you started wanting for more. You started telling your new friends intimate things about me and how they could take advantage. There were private things that I only shared with you. Now after you sold me out, all the creeps you gave me up to are pummeling me at the rate of about 400 e-mails an hour.

I can’t get a restraining order at this point so I have found it necessary to take down and deactivate the once wonderful space we shared information. I am burning down the house with the address that ended in .com.

There will be no temporary separation. No spam exile. No visitations and certainly no more further communication. Ever. You and all your digital piranha can talk amongst yourselves. Goodbye forever. The only time I will ever utter your name is on my blog and it won’t be pleasant.

You have always craved attention and now you will get it. In spades. Enjoy your new friends like Jiffy Lube, Dunkin’ Donuts, Allstate and that nut job chick from Russia.

With friends like you, I don’t need enemas.

With unlimited contempt,

The Chump

If you have any questions or need advice, please feel free to reach out to me here.

Bob O’Hearn
508-517-6714
bo*@*************ve.com

Get thy shit together.

I bought my first PC in May of 1996. I bought it at Comp USA at the behest of my then-current girlfriend, who I had just moved in with. She said we needed it for Quicken to co-mingle and manage our finances. I would soon be turning fifty and couldn’t tell a megabyte from a mosquito bite. I brought the three large IBM boxes home, plugged everything in and that was it. My life would be forever transformed.

There have been maybe a half a dozen seminal moments in my life up until that point and this was the big one. That day would take me on a journey until today, damn near twenty years later.

My life changed on the spot. There was magic in that box. Needless to say, the relationship was doomed from then on. I never came to bed. I wouldn’t go out at night and would lock myself up all weekend. The sound of Windows 95 booting up was music to my ears. I could fit in a five mile run waiting for that thing to fully load.

Then the books, the lessons, Scottsdale Community College, the workshops, scanners, software and gadgets. I started writing a newsletter for my district called, News From The Left, naturally, being based on the left side of the country. Then came web design and in 1999, video. Video was the big one. The game changer. I read “Video for Dummies” and almost had a nervous breakdown. Thought I met my match there.

I couldn’t understand how you could get the film into the computer. Then, what to do with it. The terms, codecs, cameras, decks, lighting, shooting, and depth of field. Another universe completely. My head hurt!

But…it wasn’t long before I was e-mailing my special brand of home grown video nonsense to everyone in Dupont and scaring the bejeezus out of the home office. After a 30 minute telephone modem download, of course. I shot product commercials from my tub, telling the VP of Sales and Marketing she was just getting a heads up before customers received it. Mass hysteria. Oh, the power.

As you can tell, moderation means nothing to me. Anything worth doing is worth over doing. I also don’t do anything as a hobby, like golf, knitting, gardening or stamp collection. Everything has to have a payoff. When I learned how to make my fist G chord on the guitar I said. “OK, who wants to be in a band?”

I bought more PCs, Macs, laptops, took Avid editing lessons and went on a ten year technological crash course. There was no part of a computer function that didn’t interest me. I was the only one in the company that had a web site. Not even the company had one yet. I created a patient education video for the medical imaging product I was selling.

It started raising eyebrows though, especially when a straight laced, buttoned down company like Bristol Myers Squibb bought us. Then it was, “we got some clown running all over the desert with a video camera, get him in here.” When they saw the Spanish version of a marketing video I produced, I was re-located on the spot. Created a new position for myself and never looked back.

To be honest, my main motivation was a selfish one. My personality requires that I be heard. I’m under the impression that I’m a very interesting, savvy, engaging, extremely witty and funny individual. I can never get enough stage time. From music to stand up, if that mic is plugged in, I’m sucking on it. Never had a need to overcome my shyness or had a creative block. But that’s my take, your mileage may vary.

Now, having shared all of my skills, experiences and passion for technology with you, I will tell you here and now, it’s not enough. There needs to be a knowledge/skill/talent mix. A cross functional understanding between all the involved corporate entities and a link that ties them all together. That would be you.

I’ve been in many a fishbowl with marketing and IT and watched many a communications misfire. Marketing doesn’t know what to ask and IT doesn’t know what to answer. They are on different planets. Like being at the United Nations. You need an intermediary: again, that would be you. Most IT folks live in a mostly binary universe while marketing, sales and the C-Suite need to stretch the limits of their imagination.

So, beyond all those software certifications you’re wearing on your sleeve, you need an understanding of the big picture. Education without experience is just a piece of paper. You need to be doctor, a lawyer (for the copyright ignorant, and I have met my share) therapist, life coach and mentor if you are to utilize those increasingly in-demand skills.

You also need to be humorous, patient, supportive, charming, loving, understanding and a joy to be around. You know, like…me. 🙂

If you have any questions or need advice, please feel free to reach out to me here.

Bob O’Hearn

113 Wintergreen Lane
Groton Ma. 01450
508-517-6714
bo*@*************ve.com

Well, say it!

All this bullshit about social media being a communication game changer is so duh, and it’s being totally misused, abused and mostly getting refused. This technology is your voice, your only voice. Unless you’re dead already and you may as well be, if no one has any clue you even have a carbon foot print except Al Gore. You don’t need a mirror under your nostrils to realize you exist.

There’s no time to be navel gazing and getting all self conscious about how someone might take your thoughts and opinions. If you have knowledge, share it. If you are seeing a trend that pisses you off, speak it. Use all the available technological tools we have available today. It’s time to toot your own horn. Here’s your horn.

Opportunities aren’t going to come hunting you down like Diogenes looking for an honest man. The world is too busy. It’s noisy, cluttered and generally confused. Take the microphone. No one’s gonna ding you on spelling or grammar these days. Get in the mix or wither on the vine. If you claim to be an expert at something, then act like it. Stick your mug out there and introduce yo bad self.

There’s a huge, universal conversation going on out there and all bets are off. As I’m fond of saying, “call me anything but late for supper.” You can spend years on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter and never share one original thought. What a shame. No one’s going to think you’re brilliant looking at the brownies you just baked or those tired old bromides about leadership and how you can be a better chameleon on a job interview. You want to be a human pretzel? Have at it!

If you want to be one of those “creepers” that watch all those fools make fools of themselves, be my guest. Just don’t be sitting by the phone and checking e-mail waiting to be discovered.

Only the strongest, loudest, opinionated, most insightful and clever will get noticed today. Build yourself a platform and get on it. Weigh in.

When Priscilla said to John Alden who was proposing for Miles Standish, “why don’t you speak for yourself, John? Things changed.

Open your pie hole and let it rip. You might start off a little off key but the audience will love you for trying.

By the way, you’re on next.

If you have any questions or need advice, please feel free to reach out to me here.

Bob O’Hearn

113 Wintergreen Lane
Groton Ma. 01450
508-517-6714
bo*@*************ve.com

This could have been me.

All your skills, savvy, life experience, understanding of the business, product knowledge, political connections and strategic planning, gone. Packed into a small box along with a paltry package and a pat on the ass for good luck. You never saw it coming. Shame on you. They rolled you out for some newly minted hot shot MBA or worse, the kid who worked for you on a summer internship. Don’t laugh, it happens.

It ain’t gonna get no better. Reorganizations can be prescient. Depending on where you land after the chips fall, you might want to start smelling the coffee. Getting promoted or keeping your present position might be a good thing for a while but large organizations never leave well enough alone. If you’ve lost some of your previous responsibilities or been given a different, or lesser job title you had better start feeling that breeze.

The re-org that almost got me was advanced to me by a friend that was typing it up. Given my unusual skill set and ignorance of how to utilize me, I was barely mentioned. Most likely I could have hung on. For a while. But it galled me to no end to sit this move out and report to someone who spent most of her day buried in old, dead marketing projects. I was ready though. As I wrote in Cram and Scram, I had been packing for years after coming in house and seeing how things really worked. Or didn’t. I bailed.

Don’t let the door hit ya, where the Good Lord split ya!

In my work, I cover a lot of business development meetings where BD executives from all the huge corporations come in and discuss intricate processes and procedures as well as how much of what they are tasked to do is “gut.” Their problem is, they have lots of money and they have to get rid of it. That usually means buying out some start up, an established company or partnering with someone on an NDA. This is where you come in. Or don’t.

If you come into work in the morning and you think your company’s newest idea is to add a new flavor to the coffee machine, think again. There’s a whole lot of churning and ideation meetings going on at the senior level and nothing is off limits. Like you.

A few years back, someone came into my office to chat after meeting with the CEO. He was an interim PR person and he met once a week with the big guy. The next morning I came into my office and saw a yellow legal pad on the chair where that person was sitting. I had forgotten about him dropping by and started reading the notes from that meeting to figure out where they came from. (Yeah, like I wouldn’t have read it anyway)

What I read was the most daring, outlandish, off the charts plan to sell or merge with our distributor that would have had a huge impact on both organizations. Thousands of people. The page was littered with question marks so I knew it was a possibilities meeting but knowing the mother ship, they wouldn’t have thought twice. Or cared.

As you can see on the news, trade agreements (the behind closed doors kind) are going on as we speak and someone is always going to get screwed. It’s the law of the jungle.

Your only option is to take stock of all your marketable skills, even if they’re not related to what you’re doing presently, and continually market and network yourself. You still have to survive. I mean, it is the jungle.

Where’s my legal pad?

If you have any questions or need advice, please feel free to reach out to me here.

Bob O’Hearn

113 Wintergreen Lane
Groton Ma. 01450
508-517-6714
bo*@*************ve.com