Thoughts
Now Is Never The Time For A Hot Take On Anything
At Two Minds, we like to take a breath before responding to anything with a hot take. In fact, we’re just not hot-take people. That makes us a tad boring at times when the evident goal of people in power is to cause a panicked or outraged reaction, no matter what their behavior. We’re not mentioning any names. Ellen has many years of meditative practice and training under her belt, and so does Matt. In fact, both of us meditated today before we met to write this. It’s not a hot take. It’s a 70-degrees-Fahrenheit meditation, really, a lot like the weather in San Diego.
We’re Not The Story: You Are
There are some culty agencies in the world of public relations, strategic communications, branding, and editorial content production. A good red flag that you’re being courted by such an agency is they might not even call themselves “an agency.” (Of course, we don’t, either. But we’re different! Honestly!). This agency might also resist other categorization. You say, “are you a branding agency?” They respond: “Agency? Branding? We’re far deeper than that.”
How To Reach A Broader Audience While Managing The Risk
Think about a high-risk situation. Let’s say you take a flying lesson. You get into a plane, you’ve never flown one before, and you prime the engines, ready to pull up into the sky. You’re taking a risk, and you can feel it, but it’s a risk with guardrails. In the end, you know you are as safe as possible. But why? Because you feel safe in the hands of the flight instructor, with thousands of hours of experience in the air, and a relationship with an expert ground crew. They have the knowledge, skills, and adaptability to handle changes as they arise. They’re trusted experts in an industry where you’re not comfortable flying solo.
Effing Ineffable
As we were engaged in conversation with a person whose story we’re telling for a client, they described the essence of their work on a given project as “ineffable.” What does that even mean? And why does it matter so much?
An Eclipse, An Earthquake, The End of the World Is Nigh!!!
New York City has been having quite the time of it, lately. Last Friday morning, an earthquake struck. The same evening, there was an aftershock. The following Monday, there was a solar eclipse. All that’s missing for the apocalyptic vibes to be complete is a plague of locusts. And hold on. We almost forgot to mention that lightning struck the Statue of Liberty two days before the earthquake. It all feels a bit like the movie, Ghostbusters. As you’d expect, people have taken to social media to hail the rise of the “end times.”
Here’s How To Navigate An Uncertain Future
One thing is certain: 2025 is going to be different, and then some. We’ll save you our predictions for life in America, but they don’t exactly look like an episode of The Jetsons. American society tends to put a stigma on feeling uncertain. It’s not easy for most of us to express feelings like this. Much better to say we’re “great”. This stigma holds true, even in the cause-driven sector. You may have given your funders a strategic plan two years ago and be under pressure to stick to it for the next three years, even as the world is going through seismic shifts.
When The Steaks Are High, Eggspress Yourself…
What does going out for breakfast have to do with content creation, you may ask? As business partners, we have enjoyed working together in a way that is quite unusual. Our time with clients and writing is often more expansive than reductive. It occurred to us as we were eating steak and eggs, in fact, that the meal was emblematic of our approach to working life.