Master Your Story

Master Your Story

By Kim I PlylerBusinessArtsManagement
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Master Your Story episodes

  • The Man Behind The Mort Report
    EDITORS NOTE – This Mort Report Extra is a basic guide for keeping track of the world. It is long. Headlines are only headlines; news summaries and snippets are not enough for seeing detailed distant reality. We can read Sophocles in crib notes, but that risks missing the part about Oedipus poking out his own eyes. PARIS – The noble ostrich is impressive to watch loping along an African savannah at 50 miles an hour, but its survival strategy needs work. With head in the sand and tail in the air, it risks ending up skinned for some rich guy's cowboy boots or maybe a Mar-a-Lago golf bag. My recent piece about the White House jihad on truth prompted one reader to remark that Donald Trump's slurs resonate because "the msm (mainstream media) is no longer trustworthy or helpful." Big news companies make up a single collective to be dismissed out of hand. Here's a parallel: The smc (supermarket chains) no longer provide nutritious food. Of course, they do. Choice is up to each shopper. Those who load up their carts with only Twinkies and canned spaghetti can hardly blame the store. The "mainstream" is shot full of failings, but its broad reach provides essential basic coverage. That's a start. Countless other sources add detail, verify or dispute facts, fill in context and sketch human backdrops. Anyone who fails to grasp global realities isn't trying hard enough. This is a primer to help make sense of an unruly world. With threats of nuclear High Noon, climatic catastrophes, conflict on five continents, desperate millions on the move and fierce competition for dwindling resources, nothing matters more. In 2004, when far less was at stake, British editor Andrew Marr noted in his book, "My Trade," that many people he knew ignored newspapers and dismissed broadcast news as mindless nonsense. They focus instead on their families, busy daily lives and local charity. "This is not good enough," Marr wrote. "We are either players in open, democratic societies, all playing a part in their ultimate direction, or we are deserters." Back then, A.J. Liebling's quip was still true: freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one. Anyone can play now, and that is a mixed blessing. "Journalist" is now as meaningless a word as "media." We need to know who is telling us what – and why. The Web is a delivery system, not a source. People would be leery if some stranger on the street in a clown suit and floppy shoes bloviated about places he couldn't pronounce. But clueless self-appointed experts on TV or computer screens receive far less scrutiny. Early on, Google claimed to offer news from 5,000 providers. But if, say, hostilities broke out in Kashmir, that meant 4,998 "outlets" riffed on the same dispatches from the AP and Reuters stringers in Srinagar. These days, such secondhand sourcing is beyond measure. Too many people now think news, unlike food, comes at no cost. And too many purveyors oblige with generic "content" packed in paid pitches and political cant. With a free lunch, it is hard to complain about quality. Much solid reporting comes at no charge, but we need to scale a few paywalls. We also have to budget our time. Nearly every substantive story comes with time-consuming kibitzing that also passes for journalism. Reveal, an arm of the California-based Center for Investigative Reporting, spent months documenting hidden safety issues at Tesla. The gold-standard CIR, founded in 1977 as the first U.S. investigative journalism nonprofit, relies on reporters and editors of proven credibility. Elon Musk, the man behind Tesla, fired off a series of tweets calling journalists corrupt and cowardly. The CIR, he said, was "just some rich kids in Berkeley who took their political science prof too seriously." (It's in Emeryville.) Jack Shafer, a kibitzer for Politico, fired back. He called Musk is a media assassin, not a critic, an example of nouveau-billionaires who think reporters should be fawning PR flacks. True enough. But he wrote, "Journalists love nothing more than to be slapped around (and) Musk's sustained caning…has brought nothing but sunshine and smiles to newsrooms all over America." Shafer speaks only for himself. Kathy Gannon, for one, does not love being slapped around. After 18 years in Afghanistan, she knows what "shoot the messenger" can mean. An Afghan cop shot up her car in 2014, killing her friend, photographer Anja Niedringhaus, and wounding her badly. After long, painful rehabilitation, she hurried back to Kabul. Gannon undermines another generality. Associated Press has axed experienced reporters to save money. It slashes travel expenses and often relies on untested stringers. Yet she is among top-quality AP pros who stay at their jobs. AP – like the "msm" – is neither all bad nor all good. AP illustrates how the global mediascape has evolved. During my 38 years of employ until 2005, we jokingly called it the A&P, a major grocery chain. It was a supermarket of news, cooperatively owned by newspapers and broadcasters that shared costs. Along with big stories, it kept track of small ones percolating under the surface before they erupted into "breaking news." As its members saw profits decline, AP shifted focus to big projects with bragging rights and various "profit centers," leaving too many world-changing trends and events uncovered. It can be excellent. And not. Newspapers also reinvented themselves, mostly cutting staff and shifting to "hyperlocal" coverage. A new breed of owners broke up family-founded chains forged by hard-earned public trust. Hedge fund hogs plundered. Shady magnates bought papers to push their own interests. A few dailies are now better than ever. Some try hard with what they've got. Many are a disgrace. Television news has changed beyond recognition. Once three U.S. networks kept large bureaus abroad. Walter Cronkite at CBS was the most trusted man in America. Today, CBS's website lists only lone correspondents in Rome, Istanbul and Beijing. Four work from the London hub, where stories from elsewhere are often narrated from the studio, with purchased footage not from CBS crews. (ABC and NBC staff reporters also cluster in London. It's "foreign.") Cronkite likely prolonged the Vietnam War at first by believing the Washington line rather than correspondents on the ground. But, a real journalist, he went to see for himself. He found a stalemate, and national sentiment shifted. Cronkite's trademark tagline at the end of his newscasts, "And that's the way it is," defined the times. America had to take him and others at their word. Big media set the agenda, with a smattering of smaller papers, radio networks and freelancers as a counterbalance. Logically, countless interactive multimedia sources that speed words and images from everywhere would reflect a clear picture of the world. In fact, it allows people to form whatever picture comforts their beliefs. And with tools to measure what resonates, media executives try to give people what they want. Late in May, a Harvard study said Hurricane Maria killed 4,645 people in Puerto Rico, 70 times more than the official count. Beyond the human cost, it defies belief that a government so outrageously masks the toll of its feeble response. Yet CNN devoted 12 minutes to that story and nearly five hours to Roseanne Barr getting cancelled. MSNBC was not much better. Pandering to have-it-your-way news is a boon to despots. Anything that thwarts their narrative is labeled fake, feeding distrust of all "media." Trump's campaign resonates with hardline tyrants and wannabe demagogues everywhere – particularly in Russia. David Ignatius, who spent decades as a foreign correspondent and then edited the International Herald Tribune before analyzing world affairs for the Washington Post, summed it up in a column about Arkady Babchenko, who miraculously returned from death: "When a prominent Russian journalist fakes news about his own murder to try to expose the Kremlin's misdeeds, you know something has gone dangerously wrong in what we like to call the free marketplace of ideas. These days, it has become a battle space where anything goes." Babchenko falsified his death with help from Ukrainian agents to elude Russian thugs. It worked. But reporters have enough trouble remaining credible, and alive, without an activist-journalist whose ploy, in effect, helps Vladimir Putin dismiss actual murders as hoaxes. Here are some thoughts on shaping a reality-based worldview, a framework that fits together odd shaped pieces into a quickly changing kaleidoscope: –Triangulate the way reporters do. When a new story breaks, check it against another version and add a third. As it develops, look for informed analysis that probes its broader meaning. Beyond who, what and where, look for why and what next. –Consider wider implications. A lifeless child on a beach in Turkey is only one dramatic symptom of diplomatic failure, needless conflict, economic imbalances, corruption, xenophobia. and, increasingly, a changing climate has been ignored for too long. –Subscribe to The New York Times. You need it, and it needs you. There is much to criticize. It makes mistakes, some serious, but it does not willfully distort or fabricate. It provides unmatched global coverage, with online graphics, visuals and data sets. Its archives give historical context. "The failing New York Times" is a Trump whopper. He has made it boom. It is publicly traded but still controlled by a newspaper family faithful to old principles. –Add The Washington Post for the cost of a few drinks in a fancy bar. It hounds Trump because that is a newspaper's role. Its fact checkers found he made 3,251 false or misleading claims in 497 days, some clear-cut grounds for impeachment. I'm troubled by a publisher who also dominates a global empire of cheap books and canned beans. But Marty Baron is as good as editors get, and Jeff Bezos stays out of his way. Times' editor Dean Baquet jokes that the new Post motto, Democracy Dies In Darkness, is a little grim. Maybe, but it's true. The two editors cooperate as much as they compete. –No list can begin to be comprehensive, but I've got a few favorites. The New Yorker is worth whatever it costs. Look abroad. Britain's The Guardian, free if you choose not to contribute, is a vital outsider's eye on America and the wider world. Talk to friends and poke around. Try Germany's Spiegel Online for probing analysis, interviews and hard-reporting at length. India's The Hindu, with a circulation of 1.2 million, focuses on human factors behind the news, with a staff of savvy correspondents. –TV is tough to characterize. For me, BBC is best, with reporters and anchors whose faces often reflect a hard life on the road. Funded by a TV tax, it avoids disguising paid messages as editorial product and obnoxious chest-thumping. Which brings up CNN. Its focus on Trump's campaign boosted ratings – and likely swayed the election. CNN can be excellent. Some of its correspondents are rock solid. Christiane Amanpour, who earned her chops in scary places, gets to the heart of what matters. Fareed Zakaria's analyses are good enough to make you forget he backed the Iraq invasion. ("Any stirring of the pot is good.") But keep a remote handy in case Richard Quest pops up. –Non-profit groups dig into specific subjects, with deeply reported investigations. ProPublica, the Center of Public Integrity and Reveal are among some good ones based in America. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which produced the Panama Papers and much else, relies on a network of others across the world. These groups collaborate with NPR and PBS. Independents such as Amy Goodman add to the mix. –Read books for a broad view of the world to help you tune out peripheral noise. Today's biggest story "broke" five centuries ago when Leonardo da Vinci nailed it. By tracing the flow of water and winds, he saw that humans live in sync with a single ecosystem. If that balance tips, no one will survive. Then, as now, deluded leaders fail to get this. We need reliable eyes and ears beyond every horizon. Real journalists are driven by curiosity, commitment, ethics, and a deeply ingrained horror of getting things wrong. Some young reporters seize this immediately. Some old ones never do. The trick for readers is to determine which is which. For more on Mort log on to https://www.mortreport.org/about/
    11 min
  • 7 Sure-Fire Ways to Build Instant Trust for Your Digital Brand

    Have you ever asked yourself why do prospect trust one digital brand and not the other? Have you ever wondered why folks seem to 'feel' your brand is trustworthy but couldn't quite explain? Short answer? Well, it's not that simple. In digital branding, we use combination of behavior and cognitive psychology, market research, creativity, User Experience, User Interface design and a few good strategies to help expedite the 'trust building process'. Why should you care? Because by definition, the faster you can build digital trust, the faster your target prospect (whether recruit, prospect or partner) can truly evaluate what your substance! 1. Leverage Your Client's Reputation Post the logos or names of your top clients in a prominent portion of your web site or digital storefront. Buyers are more likely to accelerate their purchase decision if they see that larger companies than theirs, or of the same size, have purchased your products or services. 2. Use Recognizable Terminology Don't invent new lines of business or product categories that are not widely accepted or pre-tested for your target audience. Uncommon terminology could cause buyers to overlook services being offered and skip to the next available choice with recognizable terms. 3. Logic First, Display Second Creating a strong resonance through prominent branding is critical, but B2B buyers use logic to filter out advertising noise. Maintain a 60/40 balance between making bold statements on your homepage and arresting design visuals (60%) to gain trust. Craft the navigation and user experience to be both intuitive and easy to follow with clear content that directs the user where they want to go. 4. Be Real. Avoid Skepticism Place your corporate HQ address on the front of the site. Every so often, users seek to validate your legitimacy and when they only see an email form or an email and a telephone number, they may assume something is fishy. 5. Beef up industry expertise Prominently display recognized industry association membership icons & logos to instantly convey your corporate citizenship in your community of expertise. 6. Leadership Profiles The leadership page isn't optional. It is one of the most frequently visited pages with B2B clients. Leadership profiles are a great opportunity to show off your managers, instantly relate credibility and build human trust. Profile shots should be consistent and professional to create a seamless, positive impression. 7. Good SEO Equals More Recognition Create high-reputation backlinks to your web site. This SEO best practice will establish credibility within Google search algorithms so that your business is on the first search results page. Establishing backlinks to other credible sites such as large businesses, news sites, and trade publications vicariously lends credibility to your own site. About the Author: Mr. Gal Borenstein is a recognized expert and strategist in digital branding, marketing, social media, advertising, online reputation management and public relations matters. He is the founder and CEO of the Borenstein Group, a top digital marketing communications firm in the Washington DC metropolitan area that serves clients locally and globally. He is the author of new business leadership book, ACTIVATE! How to Power Up Your Brand to Dominate Your Market, Crush Your Competition & Win in the Digital Age, available in premiere bookstores and on Amazon, Barnes & Nobles and Apple's iBooks. Gal has published his first business leadership book What Really Counts for CEOs in 2009. Since then, Borenstein has been featured as a guest commentator on CNN and Fox Business News on strategic marketing and branding issues, as well as, been one of the top digital content contributors to influential business leadership social media networks such as LinkedIn, PR Week's The Hub, Advertising Age's BtoB magazine, HR.Com, Smart CEO Magazine, DuctTapeMarketing.com and others. He can be reached byemail at [email protected] or @galborenstein on Twitter.

    8 min
  • Collaboration is the Key to Sustainability and Storytelling Unites Us

    Presently, I am leading a Touchstone Theatre initiative called Festival UnBound, Celebrating out 21st. Century Village, planned for October of 2019. This is the most difficult thing with which I've ever ever been involved. Once we were two Bethlehems, and it was 100 years ago North and South realized the importance of working together and became "one" (and, we're still working on it). Here's an image of the two Bethlehems, in "the good ol' days", when "working together" may seem to us a remarkably less complex challenge, but back then it was as "crazy hard" as anything one could imagine. To create a Festival of original art envisioning the future of our community, we've got to get EVERYBODY working together, collaborating to imagine what kind of future we want for this city called "Bethlehem"--through dialogue and the creation of original art. The problem is, more and more, as we sit down and talk with folks, it becomes apparent that everything affects everything else. Let's say you're homeless. One might be homeless because one is dysfunctionally dyslexic. One might be dysfunctionally dyslexic because the educational system didn't recognize it and teach good coping mechanisms. The educational system may have failed you because you were living in a poor community and there weren't funds for such things. There weren't funds for such things because the political system was too combative to achieve anything but band-aid solutions. Combativeness got out of hand because of entrenched, old power structures and a media that feeds on sensationalism in order to sell information to the general public. And… I could go on FOREVER! Everything's connected. Still, there you are, homeless! Now, how does one make a work of art, many works of art, out of that that will help transform the community? It's tempting to despair at our social dysfunctionality, but if we look at the bigger picture, it's clear we're making great progress! Here's a fascinating article called: A History of Global Living Conditions in 5 Charts. The conclusion of this article states succinctly: "The successful transformation of our living conditions (is) possible only because of collaboration. Such a transformation would be impossible for a single person to accomplish. It is our collective brains and our collaborative effort that are needed for such an improvement." An NGO for the United Nations recently wrote: "If community is to further the progress of society in its own right – complementing the roles played by individuals and social institutions–a much more expansive conception of community life must be actively embraced. New patterns of action and interaction will have to be built, and new forms of relationship and association constructed. Experimentation, trial and error, and a robust process of learning about the nature of lasting cultural change will be vital – all of which require effort and no small amount of sacrifice… Movement in this direction will require qualitatively different approaches to decision-making than those adopted in the past." Festival (un)Bound is one of those "qualitatively different approaches", and that's the task I find myself facing here in the middle of 2018. BIO: Bill received his B.A. in English Literature from Lehigh University and his M.F.A. in Acting/Directing from the Dallas Theatre Centre of Trinity University. He studied mime with Paul Curtis of The American Mime Theatre, co-founded the People's Theatre Company in 1977 and later co-founded Touchstone Theatre in 1981 where he was Producing Director until 1990.

    12 min
  • Ep 043 - Defending Those Who Defend Our Country

    While our troops are out defending our country, who is defending them from cyber attacks. Meet Rob Carey, VP of Cybersecurity and Cloud Solutions for General Dynamics IT Defense Division. Rob's career has spanned military service in the US Navy as well as supporting the Department of Defense as a federal government employee and now a contractor. He is responsible for developing and delivering cybersecurity, cloud and UC offerings to clients within the Department of Defense. Prior to this role, he worked for CSC and Vencore leading operational business units supporting the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community.

    Rob's mission is clear, his story is defend those who are defending us. Join us in today's discussion when Rob addresses two of the most important things our county, industry and corporate can do to ensure not only the safety of our troops but the safety of our entire country.

    The team at #MasterYourStory would like to thank rob for stoping by to talk with us and for his service to the safety of our country.

    14 min
  • Ep 042 - Graphics Tell the Story

    Join us today as we discuss the importance of graphics in tell your story. We spoke with Bryan Ayala, CEO of CentroDigital about how graphics need to tell the story and convey a mission even without text. With the ever changing internet landscape graphic have become a way to capture emotion in one frame as well as tell the story of a company. How to capture the correct information and bring it all together in a graphic is truly a work of intellect and art.

    7 min
  • Ep 041 - The Story Remains the Same, The Audience Changes

    Join us today as we speak with John Brown CEO of John Brown Leadership Solutions. John's career includes serving in public office, Wall St and so much more. He is a senior executive with broad industry and public-sector experience providing leadership that complements vision and execution. Transmutes critical thinking about the organization's challenges into dynamic strategic advantages and actualizes innovative solutions to create outstanding results. Join us as he shares his story of how he uses life experiences to foster better leadership.

    13 min
  • Ep 040 - Meet Babs Hogan: The Healthy Cheese Lady

    I've spent a long career working as a health and fitness professional focusing mainly on preventing disease. Eighty percent of chronic diseases are actually preventable, so I spent years learning how to help people make long-term, healthy changes in their lives. The science related to behavior change is complex because each person is different.

    As an educator, personal trainer, health coach, and writer, I've learned to use a variety of tools to motivate people. In terms of health today, the biggest obstacle is perception, regarding how we view dietary fat. There's a "perceived" belief that dietary fat is unhealthy and a "real" view based on facts. Since the 1970's we were told (erroneously) that high-fat and high-cholesterol foods were going to kill us. I believed it for almost thirty years! New science tells us otherwise. Books written by NinaTeicholz, Gary Taubes, and David Perlmutter, M.D., have unraveled the mystery concerning fat, cholesterol, and health. They have debunked all of the old beliefs. As a result, their message has released millions of us from fat prison, but oddly enough, forty-seven percent of Americans still follow the low-fat/high-carbohydrate diet. How did they miss the news?

    My transition from cheese avoider to cheese promoter happened in 2011, when my home-cheesemaking husband announced that he was going to the American Cheese Society Conference in Montreal. He had been making cheese in our kitchen for a few months and wasn't happy with the end product, so he hopped on a plane to learnfrom the experts. When he returned, he would not stop talking about cheese, which didn't interest me in the least. After a day or two, I said with a firm tone, "I can't eat cheese because it's unhealthy." We argued about it for about a week, and finally, he suggested that I dive into the research to see for myself. With a confident voice, I said, "I'll not only research it thoroughly, I'm going to travel across the state to talk to dairy farmers, cheesemakers, and scientists. Then, you'll see that I'm right about this."

    The Texas Cheese Tour took two years to complete and after interviewing thirty cheese professionals and a few goats, I had to admit to him that he was right about high-quality cheese...it is actually healthy! Now, I'm obsessed and known as The Healthy Cheese Lady. The message is simple: "Eat cheese without guilt!"

    12 min
  • Ep 039 - Using Your Passion to Change Your Life

    Mastering your story takes courage, discipline and commitment. To tell your story takes grit, compassion and mastery of self. In our conversation today we introduce you to Marinela Santos. She is the CEO of Polished By Her, LLC. a nail salon that is more that just a salon. Her salon is the mastery of her story. Tune in and listen as we discuss her life and the steps that lead Marinela to become a successful entrepreneur. Beauty comes in all shapes and sizes. The colorful nails that leave her salon leave with more than just polish. The team here at #MasterYourStory would like to thank Marinela for sharing her story and for all the work she does to give back to the community that helped her.

    8 min
  • Ep 038 - The Story Behind the Food
    Patrick Evans-Hylton is a Johnson & Wales-trained chef and an award-winning food journalist, covering tasty trends since 1995 in print, broadcast and electronic media.He is publisher of VirginiaEatsAndDrinks.com Evans-Hylton is a cookbook author (Popcorn, Dishing Up Virginia, Nuts), food historian, and a media awards judge for the prestigious James Beard Awards. He runs a cooking and wine school and teaches a number of food media-related classes. Each Friday from 6-7 p.m., he hosts The Virginia Eats + Drinks Show on AM 790 WNIS in Coastal Virginia and simulcast nationwide. On the second and fourth Monday of each month he reports on food on Coast Live at 10 a.m. on WTKR TV-3 (CBS). Evans-Hylton cooks and writes in his Chesapeake Bay kitchen in Virginia Beach. Join us today as he discusses how he became a food writer and food historian. We will take a look into the foods that made the state of Virginia known around the world. We discuss the early settlers cuisine as well as -mmm, mmm- soft shell blue crabs of today's Virginia coastal area. The team here at #MasterYourStory would like to thank Patrick for stopping by the studio. Mastering your story can take different forms and Patrick has truly mastered his. Thank You Patrick.
    13 min
  • Ep 037 - A View from the Stage, Set and Screen with Gene Connelly

    Join our conversation and hear from an actor who has been in front of the camera, behind it and on stage. Gene Connelly is an actor, producer and writer/director whose film work includes Snatch and Grab (2017), This Time Tomorrow (2016) and The Writer"s Muse (2010). Onstage Gene has performed locally at The Pennsylvania Playhouse, Pines Dinner Theater and Touchstone Theatre as well as all over the Poconos, New York, NJ and Philadelphia. Born and raised in Eastern Pennsylvania, Gene joined the USAF after highschool and was stationed in Idaho and Texas. After serving his country, Gene pursued his passion for performing; first in various bands as a lead vocalist and later has a sought after performer in stage musicals. He has performed all over Pennsylvania and New Jersey and had his NYC theatre debut in the 2007 revival of Dark of the Moon. Gene's dedication and hard work ethic would lead him to do comedies and dramas and eventually to TV/film and commercial work. He is a founding member of Fade In / Fade Out; a non-profit consortium of likeminded filmmakers dedicated to making filmmaking more accessible to the Lehigh Valley. Establishing himself has a dependable actor in a variety of genres' Gene continues to be an actor that can't be boxed in.

    9 min

About Master Your Story

From the publisher's feed

Kim I Plyler, CEO of SahlComm and author of "Master Your Story, It Matters!" uses her platform to make sure everyone's story can be heard. In this podcast you'll hear from people all around the world…