By Bob Bailly
“Men make history, and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.”
— Harry S Truman, 33rd president of United States (1884 – 1972)
Over the last several months Canadians have watched the eldest son of Pierre Trudeau move from the fringes of the Liberal Party to become its newly elected leader. After he garnered 80 per cent of the first ballot votes at the party convention last weekend, Justin Trudeau has finally been able to overcome the disdain of his opponents and the media. But as journalist Michael Den Tandt observes, “the latter will not last – unless Trudeau proves to be as effective a leader as he is a campaigner.”
But what constitutes an effective leader?
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By Leo Valiquette
Focus.
It’s what distinguishes talkers from doers, which I touched upon in last week’s post about lessons learned at a literacy conference that apply to entrepreneurs as much as they to do authors.
While I was at that conference, I ran into Canadian fantasy fiction author Ed Greenwood. Over a span of less than 30 years, this man has published scores of books, hundreds of magazine articles, a pile of short fiction and worked on countless other related projects. He is a working writer well accustomed to navigating the often-absurd complexities of the publishing industry and trying to earn a fair living while doing so. Anything beyond a month to crank out a draft of a novel is a luxury for him. He’s scarce on social media and I’ve probably just given you the reason for that.
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By Leo Valiquette
I’ve blogged before about my ambitions to become a fabulously successful novelist and my annual April trek to Toronto to attend the Ad Astra literary conference. Having just returned from the 2013 edition, here are my latest observations that apply as much to entrepreneurs as they do to authors.
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By Daylin Mantyka
As a regular feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of some of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are ReadWriteWeb, Ventureburn, Techvibes, Damn, I Wish I’d Thought of That and Velocity.
Smarter marketing: How minority report got it all wrong
In her article, Sarah Rotman Epps talks about the Smart Body, Smart World paradigm — how sensor-laden devices like wearables give us access to new domains of information. When speaking with marketing executives, Sarah finds a consistent comparison to the 2002 movie, Minority Report. She argues that the Minority Report-style marketing is a “dumb vision of the smart future” and provides some intelligent advice on implementing innovative tactics that rightly embrace the future of marketing.
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By Leo Valiquette
March break aside, we kept up the pace last month with a great lineup of content that featured some excellent posts from our guest bloggers. Hot topics included opportunities in the global smart TV market, criteria for hiring a worthy writer and the risks and rewards of having a product that is truly unique in the marketplace.
In case you missed any of it, here is a handy recap of our posts, as ranked by the enthusiasm of our readers:
March 20: Calling Canada’s startups: There’s a $200B TV market ripe for the taking, by Jason Flick
March 19: Is that writer worth the cost of the ink?, by Leo Valiquette
March 26: The ballad of the undifferentiated product, by Francis Moran
March 27: The ‘Accelerator Bubble’ will pop, but not for the reason you think it will, by Jesse Rodgers
March 25: Three (not so) simple strategies to avoid ‘losing the plot’ in marketing, by Rob Woyzbun
March 07: Oracles, shamans and storytellers, by Bob Bailly
March 13: It’s still rock and roll to me, by Francis Moran
March 21: Best of: My three buckets of customer segmentation, by Francis Moran
March 06: You can’t rely on the channel to grow sales in new markets, by Jeff Campbell
March 11: Drafting your own patent disclosure document, by David French
March 12: Don’t give your customers reasons to ask for apologies, by Leo Valiquette
March 18: Some dos and don’ts of governance, by Denzil Doyle
March 14: Before you jump on the content-marketing bandwagon …, by Leo Valiquette
March 05: From courting Hollywood’s A-list to navigating the Chinese New Year, by Leo Valiquette and John Hill
Image: March2013CalendarPrintable.com
