The Secret and Marketing Presence

A lot of folks treat marketing and advertising as a form of insurance, a sort of protection against the crisis day when the phone stops ringing and the nobody walks through the front door. In fact, that dreaded day came for many a business over the past few months; frequently their insurance policy failed to pay off.

Some wait until their showroom floor resembles a morgue before thinking about doing any marketing. They’re thinking: “Dear Lord, what will we do if this offer doesn’t pull in some business.”

Will your work be creative and innovative while a cloud of doom hovers over your head? If you’re advertising under duress, the universe responds in kind and brings you what you dread the most. It’s as if your customers can smell panic.

On the other hand, if you enjoy the marketing process, stay the course through thick and thin, proceed with positive long term expectations, keep a calm and quiet mind, and focus on remaining thankful for the myriad gifts we so often overlook, the universe will bring you more to be thankful about.

Here’s the math: Q=SM2. The quality of your work is geometrically proportional to your state of mind. It’s the Secret Formula for Success. Along these lines a quote from Eckhart Tolle:

When you are present in this moment, you break the continuity of your story, of past and future. Then true intelligence arises, and also love. The only way love can come into your life is not through form, but through that inner spaciousness that is Presence. Love has no form.

Parenthetically Speaking (or Writing)

Does attention to detail in your writing make you look smarter? Does it improve your marketing skills? It’s not hard to make a case for that. Just as clean fingernails and polished shoes help make a positive impression, so does your attention to grammar, syntax and punctuation.

So here (courtesy of Empire State College, NY) is a helpful guide to alleviate a frequently heard question: should one put the period inside or outside the parenthesis?

Short Answer: Punctuate correctly in and around parentheses. If a whole sentence is inside parentheses, then put the period inside the end parenthesis. If only part of the sentence is in parentheses, then the period goes outside of the end parenthesis.

Examples: Parentheses are like polite back seat drivers. (They interrupt to explain additional information that the reader should know.) Parentheses can hold explanations, illustrations, or clarifications forty (Byron was 36; Nathanael West, Rimbaud, and Robert Burns were 37; Thomas Wolfe and Pushkin were 38; and Dylan Thomas was 39). I told him I absolutely believe in marriage (as a cure for the temporary insanity of infatuation). Parentheses are also used to set off dates, provide reference information, and to enumerate a list.

• Angela Merici (1470-1540), an Italian, founded the Ursulines in 1535, an unconventional religious order in which women took vows but lived at home and taught in the community.
• The Chinese poet Li Po (c.700-762), a “lighthearted winebibber,” fell out of a boat and was drowned when he tried to kiss and embrace the moon’s reflection in the water (Hendrickson 111).
• The reason there are so many popular bike trails outside of Washington, D.C., is that the land is mostly flat (see contour map on page 6).
• If your toddler does not sleep through the night there are several questions to ask: (1) Have you developed a soothing bedtime ritual? (2) When checking on your child, do you accidentally wake him or her? (3) Is your toddler afraid of the dark? (4) Is your toddler waking regularly in the night hungry or thirsty? (5) Does your toddler use a pacifier or “cuddly” so he or she is able to comfort himself or herself?