What a great day to talk about the importance of creativity! I recently discovered something that I have been meaning to share with you for quite some time now. Today, I want to share with you the story of one of my favorite people that has impacted my life and my business in profound ways.
Carl Bernsteins is one of those people that I can personally attest to being a huge fan of. I met Carl in 2009 during one of my webinars with Matt Brown as we were doing an interview on the topic of “creativity.” A few months later, Matt and his partner Paul offered me a job working as a writer for their website on the topic. This was a pretty big deal at the time so I jumped at the chance.
I was hired by Carl Bernsteins in January 2011. In my first assignment, I wrote his eulogy for his son, Jon. For his eulogy, he wanted to remember him not as a celebrity but as a man with a passion to be a better man. The eulogy was written in a way that would be personal, but also make it very easy for the reader to relate to, and understand, Jon. The eulogy is available on my blog here.
It’s true that this eulogy wasn’t for his son, but it was for his entire family. Because I’m one of his coworkers, I get to pick the topics he wants me to cover. I usually focus on his business ventures, but also on his philanthropic works and his passion in the world of cars.
The eulogy is not a typical piece of business writing. Its written in a way that makes it very personal and relatable. I guess you could call it “personal” in the business sense, but it is very much real.
Here’s my favorite part. The eulogy is very real, yet it is also very abstract. It is about the business of eulogizing. For some reason, its more appropriate to talk about the business of eulogizing when it is the family business, but as soon as the eulogy is over, the business is over and everything is just fine. Because you dont have to be a businessman to write about your passions.
I’m not sure if you know this, but the eulogy business is really something like a personal statement. I can write an eulogy for my parents and family, or I can write an eulogy for a friend who has passed away. Thats the best part. It’s something that people can relate to. It’s your own personal declaration of love, of what you feel about things. Its personal, but it is also relatable.
The problem we run into with the eulogy business is that it is a self-serving business. It is about making a statement, and that statement has to be true, because you can’t just fake it. When you make a statement about someone you care about, you have to be sure that your words are true, and that they are heartfelt. It is hard to fake something that you care about, that has a genuine feeling to it.
One of the ways we can help carl is by writing our eulogy. This would be a perfect time for us to do that, because we have a very interesting story to tell. Our story is about a lot of people who have died suddenly and unexpectedly. People have committed suicide, people have died in cars, some are just gone. But many of them were driving in their car, and our story is about how a car that just got out of control got hit by a train.
This is a very difficult, emotional story to write. I have no idea if it will end well, but I hope it does because I think it is an interesting story. The idea of a car that just got out of control getting hit by a train is one that happens all the time. Why would that be the case when there are cars on the road.