Monday, March 12, 2012

What Meg Ryan and Seth Godin have in common

Today I was reading a blog post by Seth Godin titled, "It's not personal, it's business" which reminded me of my favorite movie of all time, You've Got Mail. In the movie, Kathleen Kelly, played by Meg Ryan, is coached on how to take on the big chain store that threatens the existence of her small business.

Her main piece of advice, unknowingly fed to her by her enemy, is ultimately, to pull out all the stops, whatever it takes, because "it's not personal, it's business."

When she is still forced to close her store, and is talking to her adversary, she grows impatient when he says it wasn't personal...

"What is that supposed to mean? I am so sick of that. All that means is that it wasn't personal to you. But it was personal to me. It's *personal* to a lot of people. And what's so wrong with being personal, anyway? Whatever else anything is, it ought to begin by being personal."

In Godin's post, his advice is simple: make a habit of dealing with people, not businesses.

And really, in our times, when communicating with the world is as simple as opening your phone, isn't that what we want? We ignore mass marketing, we ask to be engaged, and we ignore those businesses who refuse to "get" us. So if we want our businesses to be anything, it's more personal.

Don't believe anyone who tells you it's not personal, it's business. We know better.

Sunday, March 4, 2012

BINA: an ANIB Rewind

I am so tired of seeing that BLT photo popping up when I do actually get nostalgic and decide to look back at my blog that I figure the only way I was going to get rid of it was to close my blog down completely OR go with the other yucky option of blogging again.

But I can tell you one thing- no more promising to blog more frequently or it being my new year's resolution, I obviously can't handle the pressure, or more accurately, don't have enough worthwhile things to say at the moment. I keep wanting to do those feel-good posts, but I get the feeling nobody really likes those, ha ha.

So what have I been up to since June? Dang it. I really don't want to do this...

Well, from what I can remember...

I spent another year with an amazing group of high schoolers during NRA Y.E.S., where my group brought down all the competition in Laser Tag!


I did some pretty nifty office decorating, and my coworkers did some to mine as well (every time I decorate an office, I can almost feel my UTM pranksters there with me in spirit). My office is the highly caffeinated one:


My brother got MARRIED to some girl I've never met before (I kid, I kid)- it was SOOO much fun!


I won an award at our department's annual holiday party (and got to pick out a gun to go with it), check out this firepower:


I wore the same pair of jumpin jammerz at Christmas that Ryan Gosling wore on the Ellen Show:


I did NOT dye my hair brown:


I traveled to Vegas for the first time ever (furthest West I've ever been), and while I was there for work and I spent next to no time on the strip, I did get to take a Tactical Pistol class, woot! woot!


I created an online portfolio at the very official www.anibsho.com:


And the most exciting thing to happen to me in awhile, I got an iPad2 with my awesome composition notebook cover:

Oh! Looks like I really haven't been up to that much in such a short time span. A few things I can add that I don't have pictures for are that hubs got a job, I took an improve workshop two weekends ago (go positive! - that's the best tip I came away with), and I have been so obsessed with working lately that I have done zero blogging, or zero of anything really, so now I am on a "spice up my life!" kick (why else do you think I decided to take an improv class?). SO! If you have any suggestions for how I can add some fun and adventure to my vanilla days, please comment, I'm tired of googling things.

BWAH-YI!