Category Archives: Uncategorized

BrandingBlog Radio: Chandra Clarke – CEO of Scribendi

Remember the scene in the movie Pulp Fiction where Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) accidentally create a serious mess of their car by shooting the guy in the back seat? The only solution is to call in an expert…a cleanup guy. Winston Wolfe (brilliantly played by Harvey Keitel) to the rescue. I love the Winston Wolfe character. He knows how to fix a bad situation.

When you’ve got a writing mess (a dog’s breakfast, as my Aussie friends would call it) you need to call in an expert. Scribendi is to bad writing as Winston Wolf is to Jules and Vince.

Scribendi is a professional editing and proofreading company. I did some copywriting work for them a few years ago and reconnected with CEO Chandra Clarke for this podcast.

Chandra and I had a nice rolling conversation about how businesses can utilize her editing and proofreading services and why. I learned that her company has employees in every time zone on the planet and is available for projects 24/7, year round.

A couple of sites that I mentioned in the podcast were www.duhcorp.com and www.huhcorp.com which are fictitious companies on real websites with very creative tongue-in-cheek copy.

In case you’re wondering what kind of mess Vince and Jules have in their car… (If the bad words bother you, don’t play it. Seriously.)

Soundbites: Fire Fast, Hire Slow

This is age old advice in management circles.

Kinda funny how hard it is to do in practice. And it’s one of those topics where you look at business owners and managers and you think, “They really should take this advice.” I really want to talk about the “fire fast” but I’ll just touch briefly on the hire slow, because there are loads and loads of resources on how to hire people. Just remember that the worst thing you can do is hire the first person through the door that you think could probably learn to do the job. Continue reading

BrandingBlog Radio: Craig Arthur and Big Plans for 2012

After a busy holiday season, it was nice to have a leisurely chat with my good friend, Craig Arthur.

Since this is the first episode for 2012, we mostly talked about his plans for the new year and his renewed commitment to blogging. He is using the free outlining process that I produced for Shortcut Blogging. If you’d like to try it, just go to www.shortcutblogging.com/outline.

It may not sound like it in the podcast, but I got pretty excited when he talked about doing more free workshops this year in Australia. I may have to weasel my way onto his stage somehow. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve been down under and I’m missing it.

Read more about Craig’s activities by following him on his Wizard Chronicles blog, on Facebook and on Twitter.

Thanks for coming along in our podcast journey!

The photo is Craig peeking out his room’s speakeasy window at Engelbrecht House on the Wizard Academy Campus.