Welcome to Friday. It’s felt like a month at times, but we’ve made it to the end of the week. And it’s been one with plenty of highs to match some of the hardest lows (like yesterday’s Kavanaugh hearings). I’d like to share with you a couple of them.
 
I got a special tweet on Wednesday. After he or she read my journal about the wisdom of being who you’re meant to be, @childoftheuniv5 sent me a screen grab of a tweet that he or she said made him or her think of me. Thank you for this: in it are the words above from Vancouver Fire Chief Darrell Reid.
 
I retweeted it and wrote to him asking if those were his words and he responded: “I tweeted this while mulling over a eulogy I’m writing. I noticed things I wanted to say about my friend were about him as a good man who lived and loved (eulogy things) not about him as a successful professional (résumé things). I doubt it’s a new idea, but it was how I felt.”
 
It’s sometimes amazing the wonderful wisdom that just awaits you with the click of a mouse or the opening of a site. But on Tuesday night I had to laugh when I stumbled upon this on Facebook. I belong to a local buy and sell site and I can tell you in all honesty that I’ve never seen an ad like this. And I almost guarantee that you haven’t either.
 
It reminded me right off the bat of a chapter in ad genius Terry O’Reilly’s book about marketing called This I Know: Marketing Lessons from Under the Influence (the latter part being the name of his CBC podcast). Among the many memorable stories is one that illustrates the power of story telling when it comes to sellling.
 
Terry shares the tale of a marketing magazine’s experiment: buy a bunch of seemingly useless trinkets (a toy hammer, a picture frame shaped like a flip-flop, an old rusty meat thermometer) and write a story about them that would compel eBay shoppers to overpay. And did they! A bidding war ensued that saw a tiny beaten up hammer go for over $70. You really have to read the book to get the story. But it speaks to the value in touching people’s hearts and just how powerful that can be.
 
That’s what came to mind when I saw this on our local site the other night. 
 

 
I wrote to Ben asking, “Is this your writing?” and he said that his wife would attest that this did come from his own mind. This guy’s writing makes me not only want to buy that stove (not that I have any use for one) but to take him out for a cold one later. How could you not love someone with that kind of sense of humour?
 
By the way, the stove sold that night, he found someone to help him take it off his truck on the other end, and I became a big fan of Level Headed Home Services. I don’t know if Ben and his team are any good but I sure would enjoy the time they spent in our house!
 
Take good care and have a terrific first (full) weekend of Fall. My dad and sister arrived from Kelowna on Wednesday and we’ve been having a great time ever since; I’ll share some stories with you here on Monday. Thanks for coming by!