Frankly Speaking
Before evolving into a marketing executive, R F Timberlake & Company's president began his award-winning media career as a broadcast and print journalist helping the news industry to gravitate towards more in-depth and investigative reporting. Frank Timberlake taught broadcast and advertising, managed numerous political campaigns and operated media outlets with Linda, his wife and business partner. He has never been shy about speaking his mind. Having limited Frank to the subject of marketing, we hope you will enjoy Frankly Speaking, a marcom blog.
VACATION IS OVER! WOW! Or I Got Away on Vacation But Not Entirely
I know plenty of people who make the usual comments about
vacations: "Changed my name and moved to
a monastery." "Did not move a muscle and
loved every minute of it." " Spent the entire time climbing a mountain and
never thought about anything except surviving."
The value placed on a vacation is just as different as we
all are different. But more often than
not, there is this idea that we should totally disconnect from work and
activities.
I think that we at R F Timberlake & Company owe part of
our success to the fact that we run the gamete as far as client size. We prove our value with knowledge and
performance to large corporate clients as we run back and forth from them to
the small entrepreneurial clients. The
advantage is that we can take certain thought and performance values and
processes from one to the other, which in the end makes us more entrepreneurial
which brings me back to my vacation.
Yes I played, yes I cooked out and ate out and yes I
rested. But as a forward thinker with an
entrepreneurial focus, I first let myself roll through a myriad of "what ifs"
for our company and then I did the same for the client side of the
business. I ended up with a few sheets
of paper (I said vacation, thus I kept Droid on silent, the laptop closed and
the tablet was allowed to approach me only with something wonderful to read or
a game) with some pretty good ideas for our company, some of our clients and
for some people we all ought to devote more time, future customers and clients.
I did none of this on a certain day or a certain time so it
was all spontaneous, another great entrepreneurial attribute.
Did I have a great vacation? Yes! Did I work? No! Working is when you execute your strategic
plan and have to respond to people and occurrences. I did not work. I thought!
And Frankly Speaking, all our businesses would be a little better
if we spent more time in thought! If it
takes a vacation to accomplish this, so be it.