Three years. Doesn’t seem that far back, yet worlds ago from today. That’s the day we started Substance. I don’t want to go into a long-winded review of the last three years and what we’ve accomplished… if you’re looking for that you can review what we’ve done and how and why we’ve done it (the quick summary is: some awesome stuff). Three…
our thinking about Emotions & Feelings…
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19 January 2010
Three Years
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30 November 2009
Passion+Trust: Three Years Later
I’m writing this while returning from a family vacation, my wife and daughters asleep as we cross the country through the nighttime sky, returning home. Three years ago I was in the same situation, yet very different. I had just left my previous job and was unemployed with no definite plans, no job opportunities, and no income. Over the course of…
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19 May 2009
Digital or Interactive… what’s the difference?
I think I made a mistake. We’ve said we do “digital brand strategy.” We’ve talked about what that means. And I still think there’s still a lot of truth to all that. But it doesn’t tell the full story, and I finally realize why. Digital is a medium. And that makes digital brand strategy a medium strategy (medium being the singular…
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1 April 2009
DO
betterFUNNER!!!!!Editor’s Note: We had changed the site theme for April 1st. So if this post doesn’t make sense on April 2nd or beyond, it’s because the normal theme has been reinstated. We’ve been starting to feel like with the whole Econopocalypse (or Econogeddon, if you prefer), GMtastrophe, and general un-funness going on in the world that maybe, just maybe, we’re…
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18 March 2009
Thank you Austin!
Wow, my body hates me. Between the lack of sleep, TexMex, BBQ, late-night cheesesteaks, beer, and walking from one end of Austin to the other, my muscles, bones and joints ache. But my mind… blown away. This being the first South By Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference we’ve attended, we had unknown expectations. Would the panels rock? Would the keynotes inspire?…
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19 January 2009
Mistakes, MLK Day and Substance Year Two
“Energy that’s being poured into trying to duplicate past successes can’t be applied to the search for new ones.” – Richard Farson & Ralph Keyes, Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins Over my holiday vacation I read Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins. (Anyone who’s been following me on Twitter can tell you I’m on a “mistakes” kick lately, up to…
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25 November 2008
Thanksgiving 2008
We have a lot to be thankful for. Our health and our families, of course. We’re thankful for the people we get to share the long table with. We’re thankful for the lessons we’ve learned this year; there’s always an opportunity to do better. And we’re thankful for all the interesting people we’ve had the pleasure and honor to meet.…
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21 July 2008
It’s the Soft Stuff that Matters Most
Sometimes while mowing my lawn I drift off into some crazy internal philosophical discussions. Today’s started out with equal parts nonsense and rationality, but ended up being something significant and share-worthy. Here it is… Every business has “hard” stuff that they need to deal with in order to keep afloat. It’s the quantifiable bits – income, overhead, utilization, profit margins, etc.…
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2 July 2008
Are you relevant?
“If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.” – General Eric Shinseki, U.S. Army Chief of Staff (retired) We were discussing the concept of relevance at the long table (we love the long table) and David said, “What’s exciting to me is that companies will not rush to create products or services, but that in order to…
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19 June 2008
Change the Culture, Change the World
“It is not a matter of business as usual, it is a matter of total innovation in business models, in operations, in marketing too. Total innovation tends to go one of two ways: ignominious failure or drastic success.” – from The Green Marketing Manifesto, by John Grant (p. 49) I recently finished reading The Green Marketing Manifesto by John Grant. Important…
Arrived to beautiful weather in Austin. Off to pick up badges and then the Ginger Man for beers. Meet up? #sxsw
16 hours, 18 minutes ago / twitter.com/substance