Total Rethink

10Tell Your Story to the World

“If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.”

—Albert Einstein

Happy with the way we had delivered on our promise, Cablevision gave us the contract for Phase Two of the project, and soon after we got started, I was having my weekly lunch with my brother Frank in the same restaurant, in the same booth, halfway between our two offices.

Frank and I are the same person and at the same time exact opposites. I'm obviously better looking (in reality we look like twins). We see problems the same way but attack them from opposite ends. Where I attack them with marketing, he attacks them with math. Many of my good ideas came from him and many of his came from me, although we both “claim” that the other's ideas suck.

“Have you any idea how big a deal this cable installation you are doing is?” he asked. “You should really try to get the whole contract off them now and you should also hire a public relations company to tell the entire world that you are constructing the most difficult cable system in the world.”

His advice set off another light bulb in my head, and I started asking around about public relations people who might be able to help. At that stage, all my time and attention had gone to selling the company's services for specific projects and then to overseeing the project management itself. I hadn't given any thought to the wider subject of marketing and building a reputation for myself and the company, both inside and beyond ...