Help Me Help You

I love the famous “help me help you” scene in Jerry Maguire. Tom Cruise plays a sports agent who is down to his last client and struggling to sign him to a new contract. In a moment of passionate desperation, Jerry sprouts out all the vulnerable, self-revealing kind of stuff you are not supposed to say in a business meeting.

“I am out here for you. You don’t know what it’s like to be me out here for you. It is an up-at-dawn, pride-swallowing siege that I will never fully tell you about, ok?

Help me… help you. Help me help you. Help me, help you. Help me, help YOU.”

The way this scene turns from Jerry’s frustration with his situation, to the moment when we realises success is only possible through a better relationship with his client, where they both understand each other’s needs and motivations, is pure genius. It’s also become something of a theme for me as I think about where to take this blog over the next few years.

Looking Back – Looking Forward

During 2014 I spent a lot of time reading old blog posts, which also meant reading the comments so many of you have written over the years. This was a welcome reminder of how extraordinarily bold, creative and resilient all of you are, who’ve chosen to read this blog since 2004!

This also made me think about the best articles I’ve written. Not the blogposts that generated the most traffic, but the ones that attracted the comments, emails or social media interactions; the ones that connected. Many of these were passionate, personal and vulnerable; they were also, more often than not, helpful as well.

Help Me, Help You – The Survey

With that in mind, I’m asking for a few minutes of your time to do a little survey. I’d like to understand you a little better as a reader of this site and a fan of blogs.  Yeah – help me, help you.

The survey is now closed – thank you to everyone who took the time to reply.