I overthink so you don’t have to.
The Red Thread® Newsletter
Stories, examples, images, and data you can use to help bring your ideas and messages to life.
The best ideas aren’t found — they’re built. Get a weekly dose of strategies, studies, and stories — direct to your inbox from me — to help you make your ideas strong enough to build change on.
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The Freenoter Podcast
There are lots of resources out there on how to become a paid speaker or keynoter, but what if you speak to build your business, as a FREEnoter? Each week, join me and Tom Webster as we cover all the angles of how to profit from speaking for free. If you are looking to grow your business from the stage--without "selling from the stage," this is the show for you. We will cover EVERY aspect of building your business through speaking, and even share a different craft cocktail recipe every week, just because. Subscribe now!
Why the Path to a Better Brand Starts with the Red Thread – EP044
Before You Rebrand, Find Your Red Thread In all the years that Tamsen has done branding and messaging strategy, the one thing that always been true is that no one is ever happy with the result of a branding or rebranding exercise. The reason for that is that we tend to confuse a brand with […]
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Why Jargon Is So Dangerous – EP043
Jargon’s Many Meanings We all have jargon that’s useful in our industry or company, but we also need to make sure that our message is clear. A clear message means there’s a clear meaning, and a clear meaning is what inspires action, so that means we want to make sure that the words that we […]
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A Shortcut to Business Storytelling – EP042
The Three Acts of a Story One the biggest problems that businesses run into when they try to do business storytelling is that they mistake stories for storytelling. However, if we understand story from the right perspective, we have everything we need to turn anything we have to say into something that feels like a […]
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The Biggest Mistake You Can Make in Your Conclusion… and How to Avoid It – EP041
Leave Clues for Your Conclusion In Ancient Greek theater, an actor suspended from a crane playing a god would swoop in at the end to resolve the plot. From this, we have the concept of deus ex machina, “god from the machine.” While this is certainly an exciting way to tie up the loose ends […]
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An Easy Way to Find Pieces of Your Personal Red Thread – EP040
Understanding Power If you’re trying to figure out what your personal Red Thread is all about, start with what you can do better than anyone else. For many people, figuring out what’s going to be powerful for them is easier said than done. Power is energy sustained over time. So, where does our energy come […]
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How to Write the Rest of Your Message – EP039
Your Message as a Journey When you’re putting together a large message, like an article, book, or talk, part of the challenge is figuring out what to put in between the pieces of your Red Thread. If you’re putting that much effort into a message, what you’re trying to do is get someone to move […]
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How to Create Your Own Memorable Quotes – EP038
Finding the Proverb in Your Message We can all agree that some messages are more memorable than others but, for some of these messages, an even stickier phrasing has replaced the original. The memorable quote, “Play it again, Sam,” for example, isn’t actually what Humphrey Bogart says in Casablanca. For these messages, our collective consciousness […]
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How to Make the Most of Who You Already Are – EP037
Are You a Fox or a Hedgehog? There are many times when we’re trying to figuring out how to position who we are and what we do (our Red Threads) for a particular situation: switching jobs, or expanding our business into a new industry. We want to figure out, based on what we’ve done before, […]
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How to Write a Conclusion – EP036
How To Write a Conclusion A great conclusion is one of the best opportunities we have to make sure that our message really sticks. At the end of a message, people want to tie everything together and have it make sense, which means that all you have to do is recap the Red Thread. But […]
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Why Some People Just Don’t “Get It” – EP035
The Curse of Knowledge We spend a lot of time and energy crafting our messages but sometimes an audience just doesn’t “get it,” even though it makes complete sense to us. This happens because of a well-known phenomenon called “The Curse of Knowledge.” Basically, our brains have a cognitive bias that makes it impossible to […]
Read More The Red Thread® Newsletter
Stories, examples, images, and data you can use to help bring your ideas and messages to life.
The best ideas aren’t found — they’re built. Get a weekly dose of strategies, studies, and stories — direct to your inbox from me — to help you make your ideas strong enough to build change on.
Please enter your name.
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