So after speaking this morning to a company in Lexington, Kentucky, I was invited to Castelton Lyons, a horse farm here outside of Lexington owned by Tony Ryan, (the founder of RyanAir.) I got to pet Toccet, son of Awesome Again and Cozzene’s Angel, (by Cozzene.) What makes a horse a $15,000,000 horse? Bloodline, bloodline, bloodline, and how many races he’s won. Now, he sits in a field all day and gets $50,000 per mating. He mates about four times a day. Nice work if you can get it. Me and the horse. I’m the one in the photo not worth $15,000,000. Big thanks Julia and Phillip Hannan for making this possible. And of course, to Carolyn Hundley at Creative [...]

One of the reasons my clients tell me that they stay with me and recommend me to other companies (in addition, I suppose, because I do great work) is because I do things for them that they don’t expect. I show up at their offices without warning at 12:30 in the afternoon carrying a pizza. Or I send them clippings out of magazines that have nothing to do with their company, but rather, with a personal mission of theirs, like rock climbing, or knitting. Going above and beyond the call of any agency’s duty is what I’ve been told separates me from other consultants. And I like that. That was reinforced to me last night when I arrived in my [...]

With so many socnets out there now, and all of them having different contact means, I thought it time to update my email signature file. Was curious as to what yours was. Mine: Peter ShankmanWorldwide: (cell phone number)Me on: AIM, Skype, Twitter, FacebookCEO, Geek Factory, Founder, TripLife/AirTroductionsPR. Differently – The BlogCan We Do That?! The Book Make sense? Too much? Too little? What say you?

My friend David regales us this morning with a story about questionable (not bad, just questionable) branding. Seems David wanted to buy a 2-gig thumb drive. He went with SanDisk, one of the leaders in the field. Getting to the store, he sees row after row of thumb drives. SanDisk’s drive stuck out in his mind though. He tells why: I had to run out this afternoon and buy a thumb flash memory drive to get some data between two machines where the CD writer was not working for some reason and there was no network. The one I bought happened to include a promotion where $1 was given to the Alzheimer’s foundation, but all I saw on the package [...]

From Brian Germain, a skydiver, author, motivational speaker, and friend. A message to the people of Earth: We are bound in our journey;from fear into fearless compassion.Let us not contract into a shadowy version of who we could be,but expand outward into unlimited possibility. We must let go of the traumaand return to a state of peace.Only then will we win the war against terrorthat wages within our hearts. We can put out the fire.       -Brian Germain Brian expressed it quite eloquently up there. Perhaps I’d add one thing – Not as poingnant, but just as meaningful: "Be excellent to each other." Bill S. Preston, Esq. (Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure) We’re all we got, guys. Tell someone [...]