Coffee Filters, the Fold-of-Shame and the Big Void

You know that package of coffee filters you buy once in a blue moon? How many filters are in that thing anyway? A hundred, two hundred - more? I never counted but it’s a lot. It’s so many I actually forget about them.

The lowly coffee filter. A forgotten item. So available. So commoditized. So forgettable.

Until that morning. That morning when the experience of being a college student in an apartment I was sharing with 2 other guys comes rushing back into my memory. Why? Because after finding that we’ve run out of coffee filters, I turn slowly toward the roll of paper towel, extract one large sheet, and begin to carefully fold it, like the worst origami you’ve ever seen , into a shape that will fit into the filter holder.

NOTHING will get in between me and my coffee, even if I have to do the “fold-of-shame”.

This is exactly what it’s like to “run out of marketing”.

You look at your calendar one Sunday afternoon and you see, maybe for the 2nd or 3rd week in a row, that you don’t have enough new prospect appointments booked. And it’s then that you realize you’ve run out of marketing.

Maybe it’s been really busy at the office and you just didn’t really have time to put it together that you were running out the tail end on your marketing.

Maybe it’s been great, in fact, you’ve had so many client meetings recently [more...]