ARTICULATED

In 1999, during the telecom bubble, I went to work for a DSL company in Colorado, one operating on hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital and debt facilities. In the blink of an eye, the company had hired hundreds of people and placed expensive telecommunications equipment all over the Midwest.

It was run by a longtime telecommunications exec, a heavyweight in the industry with a bit of a reputation as a bully and hothead. My desk was very near his office.

As director of marketing communications, I was in charge of developing the brand for the new company, among other things. Once the chief marketing officer and everyone else had blessed the final-draft brand package, I showed it to the CEO – logo, sample business cards, letterhead, etc., all in a corporate and contemporary mint green. He glanced at it, grunted “fine,” and dismissed me. I authorized production. Box checked.

A couple of weeks later, in the car on my way to work, I got a call from the CEO’s assistant. She’d been with him for years and was as meek as he was brash, as timid as he was intimidating. Though she was unmarried, I found her a disturbing prototype in spousal abuse.

She whispered into the phone, “Shane, I’m calling because the new business cards and letterhead arrived early this morning. I don’t think ______________ likes them. He’s throwing the boxes. They’re exploding everywhere. He keeps screaming, ‘GOVERNMENT GREEN!! GOVERNMENT GREEN!’ I’m down on my knees trying to pick it all up. But he won’t stop throwing them.  He won’t stop screaming. He’s hitting the windows with the boxes. I’m afraid he’s going to break the glass.

“I just wanted you to know before you get here.”

Unable to breathe, I called my boss.  He was dumbfounded, out of town, and unable to help.  I wanted to call my mom, but there was nothing she could do.   So I continued on to the office to take what I had coming, certain it would be physical and violent. One colleague I called for advice and moral support turned her car around and went home. “Oh, HELL no,” were her precise words.

When I arrived, the paper and cards were returned to their boxes. The place was eerily silent, like nothing had happened. I tiptoed around all day, but that CEO just ignored me, consistent with what he typically did. He scarcely ever uttered another word my way.

About seven months later, when the telecom bust began, and signs suggested the wheels were about to come off the company and all others like it, people began getting laid off in waves – waves of 10, then of 25, then of 100. But weeks before, the layoffs began in a wave of one. The very first person let go – in the entire company – was me.  It was the most traumatic experience of my professional life. I was certain I had been fired under under the guise of reduction in force, and there was no convincing me otherwise. I had never been anything but a standout employee!  I felt like I had failed, and the sensation made me an emotional wreck. I continued to try to help and do work for the company after I was laid off, just to show I was loyal and still cared. My former colleagues pleaded with me to stop.  What a loser.

Months later, once I had leveled off a bit, I learned the company had filed for bankruptcy and hoped to keep it a secret.  I called the telecom reporter at the Denver Post, shared with him the tip, and gave him a very specific number to call for an interview.  I’d never done anything like that before and haven’t since. But at that time, it sure made things right. “Government green” it was.

I recently took a big plunge and fulfilled a dream. I became the owner of a tiny little piece of the Rocky Mountains about an hour outside of Denver. It’s a modest cabin on a plot of land off a steep and rutted dirt road at the top of a (9,000 foot) hill. It has a deck surrounded by aspen trees. Over those trees are views of mountains 30 miles away and more.

Over the past ten years, I’ve grown increasingly fascinated with the American West, the high mountains, and the notion of owning one’s own little weekend getaway. Plus I love small salt-of-the-earth communities – they keep me connected to my roots. This move seems to be the output of all those things.

The cabin is a place where I can concentrate on work. By nature of Kinkennon Communications’ mobile nature and the cabin’s proximity to my office and my home in Denver, I can easily spend a day, or a week, working there when I need to reduce distractions, find a creative spark, or simply enjoy a head-clearing change of scenery.

And it’s a place where I can concentrate on play. If I’m feeling leisurely, I can walk dogs over the rocky roads and take in the views. The place provides great access to world-class mountain biking, my first love. And while it’s no closer to major ski and snowboard areas than my home in Denver, I can access places like Breckenridge with less traffic.

The property is on Hilltop Drive.   Fittingly, I think it’s nickname will be “Hilltop.” It treats its occupants to wonders of nature like the full moon rising captured in this photo. I love it.

Last year I joined the board of directors of a national nonprofit organization that has a $35,000/year “give or get” for its board members. That means that I am committed to raising or producing $35K in gifts to the organization annually.

Taking on an obligation like that becomes a BIG item on the annual to-do list. I’m not one to ask my friends and family for money for my causes. And to reach that high bar by hitting up my drinking buddies for $100 each, I’d have to collect 350 checks annually. That’s nearly one a day. But I already have a job.

By contrast, I’m pretty comfortable making my case to foundations and corporations with whom there are some natural synergies. That’s probably the P.R. guy in me. Going that route is still a time-consuming piece of volunteer work, but pursuing money in $10K or $30K increments gets one to $35K much faster.

This year, I’ve already raised $25K. (Thank you, friends who were involved — you know who you are.)  I’m leading a contingent to Houston this afternoon to make a great big ask of a Fortune 500 company. I should receive word in August about a $15K request being considered by a Colorado-based charitable foundation. This flurry of activity could produce zilch. Nonetheless I’m feeling pretty good at this moment.

Of the money I’m raising, nearly 90% of it goes to program. And I believe it’s very good and important program. But I’ve lately discovered a more selfish motivation for spending my time this way. My line of work is P.R., and I have no desire to change that. But I figure, if I really sharpen my fundraising skills, I’ll always be able to find a paying gig.

(Photo courtesy of Nathan Gibbs via a Flickr Creative Commons license.)

I’m a proposal-writing machine lately. Until two Fridays ago, I had not responded to a request for proposal (RFP) in easily two years. Surprisingly the proposal I submitted that day made the cut in the prospective client’s search.  So feeling encouraged, I responded to a second RFP this past Friday – probably a full-blown cattle call, with every PR agency in Denver in the mix. It was a doozy – a huge, detailed request that required what turned out to be 56 pages of response. I debated and procrastinated. Then I wrote and edited and rewrote. Then I gathered and sorted and compiled and collated. Then I put all seven copies of the 56 proposal in this pretty white box, put this nice label on it, and delivered it 45 minutes before the 4pm deadline. Then I had a beer.

I met with Willie Brown last week, former mayor of San Francisco and former speaker of the California Assembly. He’s a living legend. He grew up in East Texas just like me (well, before me …).

He was everything I had imagined. Eloquent, purposeful, precise, commanding, and extraordinarily charismatic.  And no surprise, he was decked out in one of the most stunning suits I’ve ever seen. Wearing the absolute nicest suit I own, I felt like a slob by comparison. I wanted to ask him where he got the amazing garment, but I’m pretty sure I couldn’t afford to shop there even if he told me.

My other half was blessed with a whip-smart, often bone-dry sense of humor. It keeps me in stitches.

Recently, I read a Denver Post article about a prominent philanthropist who is buying a colossally big estate, one that is a major, high-profile local landmark. I asked Dennis, “Why do you suppose that guy would want to live in a 33,000 square foot house?”

He thought for a second, then offered flatly, “Maybe he’s Batman.”

It’s a question that’s been posed to me a couple of times recently. I’ve pondered it, for a moment, for the first time in the four years of Kinkennon Communications.

Is there a job out there that is so compelling that I might forego the flexibility and freedom of my #soloPR life? Set aside my diverse and great client portfolio? Turn my back on the moneymaking upside limited only by how hard I’m willing to work? Forfeit my singular accountability for my own success or failure?

Am I willing to leave my dog and wonderful home behind every day and go to an ambivalent boss and fluorescent office space?

The applicable cliché is “never say never.”  It’s possible some role out there might check such an interesting matrix of boxes that it could capture my eye like a shiny new toy. Maybe it would offer uniquely fascinating content. Maybe it would deliver some cache that might otherwise be out of reach.

But the fact is, for four years I’ve been increasingly happy with Kinkennon Communications and all that it does for my career and life. To put it mildly, that’s never happened before. I simply never see greener grass elsewhere, so I hardly even cast a glance.

What about you other #soloPR folks? Would you take that job?

I took this photo from my front porch my very first night as a homeowner in Colorado.

I’m often asked what drew me to Colorado, both by the wonderful people I’ve known for years and by new folks in my life. I still love DC and spend lots of work time there. But I opted to go west and have never looked back. Here are five reasons why:

1. The sun. The sun shines more than 300 days per year in Colorado. I once laughed at people who used WEATHER, of all things, to determine their place. (“Lame!”) I don’t any more.

2. The dryness. Higher altitude means no humidity. In Colorado, you can leave a box of cereal open for a week, and it’ll never go stale. (Kind of weird, I know.) Even on bitterly cold February days, the lack of moisture means the frigid air rarely bites into your bones.

3. The scenery. You can’t open your eyes here without being smacked with the greatness of what Mother Nature has to offer. The Rocky Mountains are MAJESTIC. My proximity to them rocks my world daily. I didn’t know that was possible.

4. The playground. It’s hard not to tilt your life toward recreation when you live in Mother Nature’s playground. There is so much world-class outdoor fun to be had here, and it’s so close. It’s utterly irresistible.

5. The mindset. True to stereotype, people take it a little easier here. The state is loaded with smart, dynamic folks, but there’s less sweating of the small stuff. There’s less professional-social intensity. There’s more latitude to embrace balance. My stomach lining is grateful.

Photo courtesy of bitzcelt (http://bit.ly/aijJnR)

My partner Warner Strategies and I recently wrapped up work for a client that is doing some important if not particularly sexy work. It is a good little company with a very relevant mission. We were hired to generate news stories about it.

Early on in the arrangement, I could see the indirect benefit to the company of the media placements we were generating. But I had a nagging suspicion that, based on the company’s stated goals, there were higher-value activities to which it could have been allocating those marketing dollars. In time, I wanted to articulate my private assessment. Of course, the fact that the company had chosen media relations was helping me pay my mortgage. I kept my mouth shut.

My principles are a powerful motivator in my business dealings. As a consultant, I feel compelled to speak the plain truth as I see it, even when such recommendations might make my client uncomfortable, and even when they might not be the smartest thing for Kinkennon Communications. I believe it’s what is “right” for me. I’ve taken the risk plenty of times in my career. Sometimes it’s rewarded in spades. Sometimes it’s not.

At the same time, I love revenue, more rather than less. I have an obligation to myself and my family to keep my infrastructure amply funded. I recognize that letting one’s opinions get in the way of that objective is self-indulgent, at the very least.

By and by, we secured some pretty good national news stories for the client. But we never quite generated what the client or we had hoped for. It’s a new company trying to create an entirely new market niche. There were just too many ingredients still unmixed for a media-relations program to cook. Personally, I thought that instead of pursuing news stories, the company should have been investing in a comprehensive go-to-market strategy, more direct in approach, mixing some very different and precise tactics to uncover and qualify new-business leads.

In a meeting, the client CEO unexpectedly popped in, and I had the perfect opportunity to make my case. As a team we are very qualified to do the kind of work that I believed would have generated greater ROI, so it was not a foregone conclusion that we would get canned if I spoke my mind. The CEO asked for my opinion! My candor might have resulted in an all-new, higher-revenue project!   But I allowed media relations and its underwhelming results to dominate the conversation once more. We lost the client the next day.

That client paid us pretty well, and I never really offered the best of my brainpower in return.  Now the client is gone.  If I had foregone what was clearly smart in the name of doing what, to me, was obviously right, might I have saved the account?   Might I really have helped that company? I’ll never know.  But I’ll be even more thoughtful, and possibly more courageous, in how I strike that balance in the future.

I digress from this blog’s typical fare to offer some frank advice to all you communications people who, as the economy hints at brightening up, might be thinking, “What I need is to get out of this creativity-sapping sinkhole and find myself a fresh new job!” I bet right now, you’re considering dusting off that resume and adding an eloquent, maybe even flourishing (!) paragraph about what you’ve been up to lately in your corporate cubby.

STOP RIGHT THERE. Before you execute a single keystroke, you need to hear something. You’re brilliant at helping organizations put their best foot forward. But your resume writing stinks. That little paragraph you’re about to create will do nothing to help you get out of the career straight jacket you’re in.

Here’s the plain truth about resumes, even in the communications field. Your resume really needs to do nothing more than two very simple things: show potential employers that you (1) saved your employer money and/or (2) made it money. Period. End of story.

I know, I know. Your resume gets a pass on such constricting criteria because you’re senior and accomplished and smart, right? “But making money or saving money is not really what communications people do,” you argue to me over a vanilla vodka and soda. “I’m not in sales. What I do doesn’t boil down that way!”

But I assure you, it must. Because if it doesn’t, your resume is gonna stink like Aveeno moisturizers.

The funny thing is, this is not news to you. What I’m asserting can be found in any good resume-writing book. But you haven’t read any of those books since you graduated from college. Now that you’re really accomplished in the field, you wouldn’t consider it.

For years I’ve spent my spare time helping people who are smarter than me turn their tragic resumes into legitimate sales tools. Often, I find, the better and more accomplished the professional, the more that resume fails to do him or her justice.  That findind is amazingly consistent.

But you are one solid communicator! You’re as sharp as they come!  You would nail that next great job, if you could get it!  So break out that old resume and heed my three tips:

1. Avoid the job description trap. Every sentence in your resume must illustrate what you accomplished, not how you spent your time. The description of how you spent your days probably already exists in a folder somewhere – it’s called your “job description.” No one cares.

2. Find the metrics that prove you rock. What were the results you achieved, and how were they measured? Did you increase awareness from 5% to 12%? Did you grow the business by $165,698 in nine months? Find the metrics that quantify your success and use them liberally.

3. Get out of the weeds. All that gobbledygook in your resume only shows that you can write in gobbledygook. You’re not going to trick anyone into thinking you’re impressive by using all that jargon. You’re a communications person – you know how to put things in plain, compelling terms. Why do you park that skill when you needed it most?

These tips aren’t only for people who are preparing to update their resume today.  Resume-writing never stops. We have to think in these terms all the time.  For every project we enter, we need to ask ourselves, “How can I turn this into a measurable result that will look great on my resume?”  And doesn’t apply only to communications pros.  It’s applicable in every field.

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When I help people with resumes, the dialogue often looks like an interrogation. “What, EXACTLY, did you achieve in the midst of this long, rambling bullet?,” I demand, looking down my nose judgmentally.  The process is painful for the poor victim, but it often results in transformation from yawn-worthiness to downright compelling.  So, when you go to edit your resume bullets…

…..

Instead of writing this: “Held responsibility for a cross-functional team of high-level communications and public relations professionals charged with implementing all aspects of the organizations marketing communications and public relations strategies.”

Write this: “Led the team that generated 92 news and blog pieces in 180 days that supported an 18% increase in sales over the previous year.”

…..
Instead of writing this: “Oversaw all aspects of communications in support of the associations industry-leading public affairs and legislative advocacy efforts.”

Write this: “Led a talk-radio and editorial-page outreach campaign that Hill staffers anecdotally say was instrumental in securing needed Congressional committee votes on a top legislative priority.”

…..
Instead of writing this: “Held responsibility for all internal communications programs, including overseeing newsletters, employees events, and intranet.”

Write this: “Spearheaded an all-new internal-communications strategy that contributed to a 12% drop in employee absenteeism and a 23% decrease in employee attrition during the strategy’s first year of implementation.”

…..

So give it some thought and give it a whirl.  That next great job awaits.