• Are you working like an entrepreneur?

    Posted on May 21st, 2013 by and currently 0 commenting.

    photo[4]
    This illustration for the cover of this month’s TOWN magazine is from my shiny talented niece Alice Ratterree.

    Okay. I have question for you this morning.

    How long has it been since you were so excited about an idea you couldn’t sleep?

    Hmmmm.

    I’ve started having some quiet conversations with the Brains on Fire tribe about what excites us. I really haven’t had an agenda, I’m just curious. So I’ve been asking and observing and listening.

    Here’s what I’ve discovered:

    We love and value great design. All of us.

    We love smart ideas and often send brilliant ones we stumble upon to each other by email.

    We love people and truly believe the world is full of amazing human beings.

    We get down right emotional about the things humans will do for each other.

    We love dogs and kids and cooking and books and fashion and flower arranging and music.

    Collectively we celebrate and believe in excellence. We defend the right to pursue it at all costs.

    We believe marketing has the power to change lives in a positive and meaningful way.

    We don’t celebrate working late or overtime, but I’ll often come in first thing in the morning to be surprise and delighted when someone “just felt they could make something even better.” And so they stayed late to make that happen.

    Here’s something else I’ve discovered:

    If you find yourself a part our tribe, you are an entrepreneur.

    Yup.

    As I’ve been asking and listening and learning it dawned on me with a fierce certainty; I’m speaking with, observing and working alongside of an amy of entrepreneurs who drive my passion even further every single day.

    Yesterday I got an email from a young friend of mine. She’s thinking of starting her own business. The email she wrote, asking for a little networking help and some simple advice, almost CRACKLED with passion and excitement. I caught it. And Jumped right into trying to help her. That’s what people who are driven by strong desire and passion do, they spark their desire and passion in others. They trail little bits and pieces of desire and passion in their wake.

    All day long.

    So, how about you?

    Are you only living for the weekend? Or are you excited about the possibilities each day brings? Do wake up with excitement? Do you work hard to make things “even better”?

    Are you working with the desire and passion of an entrepreneur?

    If not, what can you do to change that?

    Come on. Let’s talk this morning…

  • Volleyball Family, A Broken Bus, and Albert the Amazing.

    Posted on March 14th, 2013 by and currently 0 commenting.

    KentuckyExpoCenter

    The above panoramic pic was pretty much my view for the entirety of last weekend. Kentucky Expo Center. 100+ courts all filled with matches the whole two days!

    Working with the groovy group of Community Managers here at BOF, I get the privilege of watching them rise to handle the occasional tough online (and offline) situation with professionalism, grace, care and concern. As a result, I think I see everyday situations in my non-BOF life through a different set of eyes. I appreciate the chance to watch how people deal with certain issues that present themselves, and I make mental notes of how to translate those experiences into sharable, teachable moments. Last weekend I was gifted with just such a chance.

    Over the weekend, my family and I (and about 30 other families from teams within my daughter’s volleyball club) traveled by chartered bus to Kentucky to play in a huge volleyball tournament. The 8-hour ride up to Louisville was fun—lots of laughing, eating, sharing of stories—with a little bit of open-mouthed shut-eye mixed in (trust me, I wished I’d have thought to take a few blackmail pics of some of my fellow trippers!). One thing that made our trip up extra special, however, was our bus driver, Albert.

    Albert could have strictly seen his role as a professional bus driver getting a group of volleyball families to pre-determined locations. Instead, he chose to treat us all like REAL family. His sense of humor was totally on point the whole weekend, and he went out of his way to make our travel experience a memorable one. He took care of us.

    That caring became even more evident when, on our trip back to Greenville, our bus started to smoke and leak fluid from the right rear tires (did I mention it was around 11 PM and we were just inside the NC border?). We thankfully made it to the next rest stop before we had to bid adieu to the bus we were riding on and wait for a new one to come pick us up.

    Albert was clearly upset and emotional. He announced to our group, fighting back tears, that he takes his job very seriously, that he was embarrassed about the technical difficulties, and that he would do everything he could to make sure we all got home safely. He answered our questions and tried his best to calm our concerns about the arrival of the replacement bus. An hour-and-a-half later (after some more laughing and story sharing), we were back on the road and headed home in a new bus with Albert at the wheel.

    Albert did MORE than make sure we got home safe and sound. Me made our entire volleyball club family his own for a few days. Personally, he blessed me with another opportunity to see someone handle a tough, public situation with grace and honest concern. You might even say he did some amazing offline community management!

    So, I ask…do YOU ever see your non-work world differently because of the roles and responsibilities of your work world? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

    Shannon Kohn Shannon Kohn is the Velvet Hammer at Brains on Fire. Meet her here.

  • Do You Value What You Fear?

    Posted on March 11th, 2013 by and currently 3 commenting.

    I’ll admit it…I’m on Facebook a lot. Mostly for the awesome Tinkernation community I manage, but it’s also sometimes the only way I hear from a very busy friend, the way I first catch a news story and it can even include a little bit therapy via others’ wisdom.

    I had a friend post a little while ago on Facebook a line from her daily reading – “What you fear reveals what you value most.”

    That line has been sinking into my mind for a week or two now. It grows in its power, doesn’t it?

    So if you know me, you may know that on the inside I’m a worrywart. I worry…a lot. I plan for things to go wrong in every which way. This trait is great for being an event planner and not so great for my muscle tension. Things always happen when you are least expecting it, right? So I just try to always expect it, thereby preventing it from going wrong. This is my logic.

    Still, I can’t get that line out of my head. Do I really value what I fear? Do you?

    All the little things that we worry about at work in our day-to-day, all the little problems we fear going wrong…are they actually valuable?

    I think I should be a little pickier about what I give mental space to.

    Emily_EndPostEmily Everhart is our Gentle Nudger + Community Manager at Brains on Fire. Meet her here.

  • A Few Days in the Firesphere

    Posted on March 6th, 2013 by and currently 10 commenting.

    A Few Days In The Firesphere from Shannon Kohn on Vimeo.

    What started out as an idea to create and share a video of one of our BOF Monday morning “family” meetings, quickly morphed into the “slice of life from inside the Firesphere” video you see above this post. Truth be told, I’m still in love with my latest time-lapse video iPhone app download, and enjoyed a little more creative exploration utilizing it over the past two weeks!

    Meetings. Meals. Monumentally cool people (ok, I pushed a little for the alliteration on that one, but the folks I work with are truly some of the most monumentally cool people in the world). There’s also a little visual awesomeness and some interesting objects from around the office thrown in there for good measure. Slice of life, yo!

    Oh, and a humongous THANK YOU for hanging out with us and sharing your thoughts here on the BOF blog, on Twitter and on Facebook. YOU GUYS ROCK!

    Shannon Kohn Shannon Kohn is the Velvet Hammer at Brains on Fire. Meet her here.

  • The Art of Caring

    Posted on March 4th, 2013 by and currently 1 commenting.

    The other weekend I went to see Amour, an Austrian film nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards (this is the first foreign film to ever be nominated in this category). This film is about an elderly couple that is struck with tragedy when the wife has a stroke and becomes paralyzed on her right side, leaving her unable to do simple everyday tasks. Her husband cares for her every need; he does not abandon her, even though taking care of her is often challenging and heart-wrenching. Watching this film was an experience to say the least, but I came away with knowing this man loved his wife so dearly he made the choice to take care of her through thick and thin. What a commitment! And an astounding display of what taking care of someone’s needs really looks like.

    I take great pride in caring for my fellow peers here in the Firesphere. Although I am not required to go to the extreme that the characters in Amour are, I intentionally care for the needs of this office and the people in it. Taking care of people is something I have always enjoyed being able to do, and I did not realize that being an office manager could be just that—taking care of people. Caring for people is a foundational element that transcends all fields of work. My job is to keep Brains on Fire movin’ and groovin’, despite anything that may try to slow us down. Each day that means something different (they keep me on my toes!). Nonetheless, each day requires heart, and by taking heart, I show care to my peers. By taking care of my peers and the needs of this office, they are able to do their job well, and in turn, they are able to care for our clients, which is most important. We thrive on caring for our clients. Expressing care is a chain reaction–I care for and nurture Brains on Fire, Brains on Fire does the same for our clients, our clients for their fans, and so, on it goes. Caring is contagious, and it requires heart. Brains on Fire has heart, and that makes us unique in our business. When heart is evident in something, it leaves a lasting impression.

    How do you care for your employees? Your Clients? Your Friends? Is heart evident in your work?

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