Shoes

As I approached the rebranding of me I was reminded of the old tale “The Cobbler’s Shoes.”  The reference is to the busy cobbler who never had time to repair the shoes of his own children.  There I was giving advice to my clients and guiding their upgraded web and brand presence while ignoring my own.

This inadequacy was brought forward to a contemporary point in a post a while back by British based Guy Browning at Smokehouse and used with permission:

“There is an old saying that cobblers children have no shoes.  This holds equally true in business today. For example a marketing company will take five years to produce a simple brochure that says nothing about the company.  An IT company will have a forty year old steam powered internal network that can’t handle e-mail or any other information.  Banks and financial institutions are forever going under because of financial difficulties.

This rule applies to every single business and organisation in the country. You try finding a first aid tin in a hospital or a torch in a lighthouse.  The one weapon the Swiss Army don’t have?  You’ve guessed it.”

Well for me that was then.  Today I quiet one of my daughter’s most effective verbal weapons against one of her parents, the accusation “Hyp-O-Crite.”  I am once again practicing what I preach.  And it feels good.  Thanks first to the terrific web design team of Marni and Nicolette at PaperSky Design who conceived and executed the new web presence for Stagnaro Strategic Marketing.  My gratitude also to old friend and social media guru Woody Goulart who patiently lead me to this next level of understanding.

As an aside, in poking around the internet to make sure I had the cobbler reference correct I discovered that today’s cobblers are enjoying a renaissance.  The current economic woes have driven people to repair not discard.  Seemingly the old economic rules still apply and there is a way to prosper even in the darkest of temporary times.