"No space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused.” – Charles Dickens

The holidays are an incredible paradox for me. On the one hand they are a celebration of love, gratitude, and the meeting of hearts in this world where we so often forget the joy...

What does it mean to connect to someone?

I’ve asked this question a lot. I get asked this question a lot as well. It’s a hazard of being a writer who made his latest name by “connecting” with people. I’ve heard a lot of definitions for what “connecting” is. Some of them...

I recently attended the SOCi Summit, a 3-day conference focused on social marketing at the local level. We were immersed in data and lessons presented by key figures from some of the biggest social media companies.   

I discovered that Google My Business is be...

ACT 1, SCENE 1

EXT. SECOND-STORY ROOFTOP GARDEN – SHORTLY AFTER SUNSET

It’s November 9th, 2016 in Charleston, South Carolina. Up above the city streets on the roof of a wood-paneled restaurant with sunshine-yellow trim, a distraught young woman (early 20s) is approached...

There are times in our life when we reunite with those who share some experience with us. Veterans laugh and joke over the stories from many thousands of bored minutes before the moments that will make the history books, or won’t. People gather in the lobby of a hotel...

Roads are amazing things. Some of them are well carved, paved, and laid out for us clearly defined. These are the roads we all know, the safe ones; at least they are on the surface. Other roads are harder to define, barely present trails that scare us a bit more. Still...

Take a moment and think about the last line you stood in. Not a quick line, but a line with a ton of people and inconvenience. A line that kept you from something important, something you wanted. Maybe it was the grocery store or traffic on the way home, it doesn’t mat...

“Be yourself.”

This is probably the best advice I ever received and, for the life of me, I can’t remember when I first heard it. Few of us can, though so many of us have heard these words before. On our first day of school, heading out to our first date, or even saying...

Name a show you like. How about a band? A sports team? A favorite book? Any of these seemingly innocuous things have the astounding ability to bond you to another, to set the stage for a conversation, a connection, perhaps even a friendship. My friend Curt and I both l...