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Young Living, Nature’s Remedies, and God’s Awesome Creation

February 23, 2015 by jennifer mcgahan Leave a Comment

Young Living, Nature’s Remedies, and God’s Awesome Creation

The chemistry of Essential Oils and nature's remediesThe cover of this book says it all. God’s amazing grace includes nature. His most prized creations (you and me, of course, but all the flora and fauna, too) can’t be duplicated in a lab. No way, no how.

Even all the nifty antibiotics and  lifestyle drugs these days — the wonder products of pharmaceutical companies — can’t match the astounding complexity and therapuetic power of a simple drop of the commonest-of-common, lavender essential oil.

Now I’ve never really thought too hard about chemistry. I passed it in high school; to mix things up, and for a bit of relief from consuming novels, I took astronomy, physics and calculus in college, even though I was an English major. After a long time away from all things associated with the study of matter, I tend to think of chemistry in the same realm with mad scientists in labs, and meth labs in campers, a la Breaking Bad.

Now, wonder of wonders, I’m newly in love… with matter! Particularly the chemical  stories and vignettes described in the book. Like, why does a bee get drunk on plant nectar and woozily dance through the air — even when there’s no female in sight to impress. Would you like to know why he does that? There are tons of stories about nature’s remedies like this inside. I highly recommend this.

Whether you believe God has a master plan or not, your jaw will drop when you discover the complexity and awesome design in creation.

Filed Under: essential oils, The Book Pile Tagged With: biochemistry for dummies, David Stewart, drugs, EO, essential oils, god's creation, mad science, natural healing, natural miracles, nature, nature's remedies, pharmaceuticals, plant science, The Chemistry of Essential Oils, young living

Telling Stories That Save Lives: Our Built-In Survival Mechanism

April 17, 2014 by jennifer mcgahan Leave a Comment

Telling Stories That Save Lives: Our Built-In Survival Mechanism

stories save livesAll stories tell of a conflict and its resolution.

Every unpleasant circumstance can be described with a tale by someone who overcame it. Happy endings taste sweeter when the protagonist turned lemons into lemonade.

Imagine you’re a visitor to Africa in the early 1900s.

You’ve never seen a lion, not even in a zoo. You haven’t personally witnessed their size, shape, color, or hunting ability. You’ve never seen a lion prowl, bask in the sun, or lope through dry grass on the savanna.

No throaty growl, no hunger in their eye, no muscle graces your personal memory. Yet you can imagine her.

You can imagine the ferocity with which she rips into her dinner, her intent focus as she licks her young cubs clean. You can visualize the straw-colored fur of the animal, and even the flick of its tail because you’ve read, seen, or heard accounts of lions. Maybe you saw a picture. Maybe, if you are lucky, you know more about lions than a mere, clinical understanding because you also heard a story…

The Rustling in the Bush…

Imagine your host lives in a quiet village. You arrive and spend your first night in his hut, enjoying food and conversation, including stories…stories about lions, rhinos, and famous hunters.

Lucky for you, you take it all in.

Next morning, you wake with the sun and head out to the river. You need water, so you’re up and moving, enjoying the morning light and the walk.

Suddenly, there’s a soft rustling in the bushes about 40 yards away. Hush. You stop. In fact, if you’d been listening too closely to your own thoughts or your own footsteps, you might have missed it. You strain to hear it again, like a gentle sound of something slightly adjusting itself. Could have been a breeze…but it’s not quite like the rustle of leaves in wind. And there is no wind.

Maybe it was a ground squirrel, or a bird hopping from one branch to another. No, this whisper of sound had weight behind it. You turn your head and freeze, unable to see the eyes that are intently focused on your next move.

If you had not heard the story last night about the swift villager who shot an arrow through the right eye of a lion last winter, you wouldn’t have a “next move.” You wouldn’t be wondering whether this lion was the half-blind legend, or it’s two-eyed sister. Instead, as adrenaline surged through your body, you’d be thinking in your last moments…”I am dinner.” 

If you had not paid attention to the story, the circle of life would end for you; and continue to turn for the hungry beast in the bush. 

Mutual tension builds as the lion sinks lower on her haunches, pressing its paws one after the other into the soft ground. The lion never takes her eyes off you, and emits a low rumbling sound from its throat, just as it springs toward you with terrible, quiet speed.

You are ready.

There is one way to escape your fate, only one — and only if you are lucky enough to be hunted by the one-eyed lion, and no other.

For this was the story your host told you last night.

You remember what he said, how you could thwart the attack and survive. Last night there was laughter and some sage head nodding, but this morning…that entertaining story saves your life.

Wired for Story

stories and case studiesWired for storyThe brain needs stories. Humans depend on stories to survive. Lisa Cron tells how this survival trait is hardwired into early humans in her book Wired for Story. Without the ability to process a story, early man would not understand that the rustling in the bush meant danger. [from the book Recommend This! by Thibeault and Wadsorth… Both books are worth reading.]

The connections we have with others require the ability to sympathize and match our experiences to those of others. It’s a beautiful thing, really, the human brain.

In the lion example, your cognitive brain establishes the possibility of danger and equips you with a possible way of dealing with it — even if you’ve never personally experienced being stalked by a hungry predator.

In modern life, stories are still essential.

We tell stories to our customers, our friends, our kids, our parents, and our colleagues. We warn, delight, educate, shock, and comfort them with stories. When you want to prevent or encourage an action in others, tell a story. Allow your listener to imagine a similar outcome . Show how that outcome helps, prevents, soothes, or makes people better in some way.

Processing stories is one way humans survive. We listen because they entertain us. We listen because our brains require it. We remember them because stories help us make sense of the world.

We retell them because they alter the path of our lives and may do the same for our listeners.

And that’s why humans must continue to tell and retell stories to survive.

Lion photo, Flickr CC: Olivier B. 

Filed Under: Content Marketing, The Book Pile Tagged With: . web copy, customer connection, making a connection with web content, stories, stories in copywriting, stories in web content, stories people remember, storytelling in web content, telling a story, telling stories to customers, web content

#JJJRH: Small But Mighty Microcontent Anyone Can Create

December 16, 2013 by jennifer mcgahan Leave a Comment

#JJJRH: Small But Mighty Microcontent Anyone Can Create

“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”

― Mother Teresa

do small things with big heartReading Gary Vaynerchuck’s Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook (#JJJRH) tonight, and enjoying the motherlode of case studies about the right and wrong way of using micro content to drive engagement and sales. 

The big takeaway: this stuff doesn’t have to be like giving birth. Creating content can be easy. Put another way: it doesn’t have to be time consuming and expensive. It can even be fun. At least @GaryVee makes it seem so. He painstakingly illustrates all the parameters for exactly how to go about creating and posting content on all the really big sites. It’s like a picture-filled guidebook for micro content 2013…and I’m hoping he comes out with volume two in 2014! 

Micro content creation will work for you.

Most people I get to talk with are running a small business while at the same time, serving their customers. There’s no disconnect. A lot of solopreneur brands are pretty much their own personal brand.

There’s not a clear division between “real life” and work and social media, which means that whenever you pick up your phone or laptop you lose an hour or two.

Too much information? Just enough? Why do these little pieces of content suck people in for so long when they have other things to do anyway? Because they’re scrolling fast, pulling in content and instantly deciding whether to read it, or even look at it for longer than 3 seconds.

All of that information and visual candy drives you forward — bit by tiny bit. It’s movement: blurring fast movement of eyeballs over images, text, headlines, hashtags…zoom. You get hooked, almost as if you are carried along down a swiftly moving stream. 

You know you do it. So why would you expect your customers to pay any more attention to you than to Christina Aguilera’s new cell phone case, or the video of your friend waterskiing? Truth is they don’t. They don’t care unless it grabs them. Or they know you already.

When you’re thinking about marketing in 2014, you have to think small. Think tiny, Think MICRO.

Tiny, little bites. That’s how your customers consume content. If your content grabs them, they click over and look at your website, or read your bio on LinkedIn, or even read a blog post. 

Micro content is the easiest way to reach the customer of your heart-centered small business

The way people grab information is perfectly suited to the type of content someone who’s busy — but passionate about their business — would create it. Quickly, not a huge investment of time, not too “over-done” or studied.

That’s what’s so cool about the way marketing is going!

Can you make this work? Seems like it could be easy, right? Just snap a photo every now and then and pop it on all the social media sites you’re on, with hashtags, of course…right?

Gary Vaynerchuk's book, Jab Jab Jab Right HoookGaryVee says NO. Each piece of content should be created for the stream you’re tubing in. And that’s the best segue I can offer for why you should read @GaryVee’s #JJJRH…so you don’t go blasting all that micro content to everyone, everywhere.

With a marketing strategy, and knowing what content goes where, you gain confidence and engagement with potential customers. Best of all, you can do this with a small team and not a lot of money.

No big deal if something doesn’t stick. You can turn around and post something new next time. And that “next time” can be right after lunch.

In this fast-moving, mobile, connected age, anyone –literally anyone — can do this. All you really need is heart, and a good understanding of your peeps.

“Small things with great love…” A weird way to describe a book whose title refers to boxing, but a suitable analogy for marketing your small business in 2014.

Filed Under: Social Media, The Book Pile Tagged With: @GaryVee, #JJJRH, content, content creation, digital marketing, Gary Vaynerchuck, Jen McGahan, marketing strategy, micro content, microcontent, mobile content, MyTeamConnects, online marketing mobile marketing, small business, web content

The Sharpest Copywriting Tool On Your Shelf

March 21, 2013 by jennifer mcgahan Leave a Comment

The Sharpest Copywriting Tool On Your Shelf

words that sell, the copywriter's bibleCopywriting isn’t like giving yourself a haircut!

You really can write copy — and rock the very hearts of your best customers — for your own small business. 

Connecting with your ideal clients requires emotive words and phrases. Marketing your small business through the written word means finding those juicy words even when you’re talking about logical things! That’s copywriting.

Copywriting is a lot more fun when you have the right tools to help you along.

This is one of my absolute favorite books on my shelf. (Here’s another one on my digital shelf!) It’s dogeared and bookmarked because it helps me spice up ho-hum words and phrases.

When copywriters need a jolt they reach for this faithful friend. Words That Sell by Richard Bayan is a classic.

Case in point. Nothing sends readers running away faster than telling them something is “informative.” YUCK! And yet look at our Google-driven web, where everyone searches for…information. Ironic, isn’t it?

So if you’re looking for a way to say “informative,” this book contains 62 new and different ways to say it!

For inspiration, you could also try checking under the headings “Complete/Thorough, Exciting/Stimulating, Honest, Self-Improvement, and Service/Help.” Send that creative muse nosing through a different neck of the woods and you might come up with more ideas for content or just plain better copy.

Gurus and famous copywriters might claim they can reach out in the dark and grab the perfect words in the perfect magical order that compels people to “act now,” but sometimes the rest of us can use a little revival. In fact it’s SMART to access the very best tools you can get your hands on and keep them handy while you craft your copy masterpieces.

Get a copy of your own to help shoot your copywriting message straight to the hearts of your ideal clients and customers.

Not feeling up to it? Great! Give me a holler and I’ll do the writing for you. 😉

Filed Under: Copywriting, The Book Pile Tagged With: copywriter tools, copywriting, copywriting book, copywriting tip, emotional words, marketing book, persuasive words, Richard Bayan, Words that Sell, writer's tools

Serving Boomer Consumers and Women

March 22, 2012 by jennifer mcgahan Leave a Comment

This week I'm studying the spending habits of Baby Boomers (Boomer Consumers) and how to market to women. These are two very hot segments right now…large, wealthy and influencial. 

Boomer Consumer marketing book, Matt Thornhill and John Martin
A book I'm reading at the moment.

 

The right connection with these groups could mean a sweetspot in your marketing efforts and email language. Some trends are surprisingly common between them. Here are few to get your wheels turning:

  • Internal values: Boomer Consumers begin to care less about what others think as they approach retirement. Their purchases satisfy internal values — self-fulfillment, self-respect, accomplishment. This is a change from the more intense social influences of their 20's and 30's. Women also respond to messages that speak to her self-improvement. Women value aligning life with higher possiblities; i.e. the potential for a positive inner change.
  • Information Bottleneck: Three out of ten Boomer Consumers prefer companies to give more information. But only four out of ten believe advertisers do a good job delivering it. Women also like to weigh information — lots of it! — very carefully before making a purchasing decision. Women are not the quick shoppers that men are. (Is that a surprise to anyone?) State of facts clearly, along with reasons why they make a difference to your customer. It could be the linchpin of a purchasing decision.
  • Believability: 90% of Boomer Consumers say they want advertising to be more believable. However only 20% think advertisers are serving customers in a believable way. Women also are suspicious if they think they are being "sold to." Their "bullcrap radar" is naturally kept at a fairly high setting — especially in a selling situation. Send consistent messages, not outrageous offers; to soothe this sensitivity.

Online marketing is perfect for building trust because your customers can watch how others perceive your value before engaging with you themselves…

Accountability is in high demand on the internet these days. Email marketing creates a culture of authenticity that breaks through a lot of these issues — if you do it right. I'd be delighted to talk with you about it! Click here to contact me.

Filed Under: The Book Pile Tagged With: baby boomer marketing, baby boomers, Boomer Consumers, consumers, John Martin, Matt Thornhill, women

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