Lessons By Leaders #1

Welcome to our first ‘Lessons From Leaders’ newsletter.

You’ll notice that the SimonDell.com name is no more, but has been replaced with our new brand Paper Planes. This includes a brand new website and brand livery, plus a new manifesto that we’re particularly proud of.

We’ve also been holding a mirror up to ourselves recently with our client-focus and learning a lot from Jeff Bezos and Amazon, and we’ll be implementing some ideas into how we operate in the coming months.

As part of all of that, we’re looking at our approach to this newsletter which is now going to focus on the things we’ve learned from the people we work with and the podcast guests we have on the Paper Planes Podcast.

We hope these lessons will help you with your day-to-day business focus, especially around your marketing.

The Podcast

Petar Lackovic, The Entourage

A few weeks back Simon interviewed Petar on the podcast and talked to him about the work he’s done with his business, the Sydney-based Entourage.

Some notable businesses have come through their training – including Jane Lui of ShowPo fame. In fact, just the 45 minutes I spent chatting with him, and an hour together when we caught up a week later, has really helped deliver some focus to our business. Listen in to his podcast here.

Books We’ve Read

‘Hero With A Thousand Faces’ – Joseph Campbell

A fascinating in-depth look at how human history is not just built on storytelling, but how many of those stories are very much the same.

Even today, storytelling is a vital part of most business marketing. Even the most mainstream of businesses often have stories about their business on their ‘about’ page. Joseph Campbell’s classic shows how all stories follow a particular pattern; it’s amazing to see how many different cultures have a ‘virgin birth’ story. It’s not a light read. I did it as an audiobook which makes it a little easier but Campbell was a professor writing his book in the late 1940s, so be prepared!

Good Omens

We also read ‘Good Omens’ a book that was written by Neil Gaiman and the late Terry Pratchett, based on a 5,000-word short story created by Gaiman and is now an Amazon Prime TV series. The story of how they wrote the book together is an example of how a partnership can give your brand a boost. Terry Pratchett asked Gaiman about his short story: “Do you want to sell it to me? Or write it together?” Gaiman says he responded with: ‘”Write it together,” I said, because I was not stupid and because that was the nearest I was ever going to get to Michaelangelo phoning to ask if I wanted to paint a ceiling with him.’

Read about it here.

Articles Worth Reading

The restaurant owner who asked for 1-star Yelp reviews

Every had a bad review on Google or Facebook? Well, this restaurant has had thousands of 1-star reviews and has totally turned the review system on its head. It’s an interesting story about how not all digital marketing is the same.

Read about it here.

Kind regards,

Simon and Matt