Author Archives: Maddalena Di Gregorio

Stop Boring Your Audience

How many laborious and painful presentations have you had to sit through, and how many tiresome presentations have you hosted? No matter how great a speaker you may be, chances are you’ve bored more than your fair share of audiences. Remember that people only retain 20% of what they hear, 30% of what they see, and 70% of what they hear and see.

The Winter of Our Discontent

Many of you are probably familiar with Steinbeck’s novel, The Winter of Our Discontent, which essentially means now we are in a period of misery. The combination of extreme heat, fires, droughts, flooding, supply chain, and transportation disruptions, plus the disproportionate price hikes of fuel and electricity means that we will be seeing a lot less food on store shelves this winter. Meanwhile the rich will keep partying and flying around in their private jets just as they did during the Corona Virus Pandemic.

How To Become An Astute Consumer

As much as shopping online has opened us up to a big wild world of endless consumer goods it has also opened up a deep dark vortex where people get sucked into a scrolling stupor. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate and have enjoyed the convenience of online shopping as much as anyone else, especially during the pandemic lockdowns. But there is a downside to all of this.

Confessions Of A Serial Boot Collector

When I was nine years old, in Northern Montreal, I used to take a shortcut through a field to get to school. One winter day, crossing the frozen field, I crashed through the ice. Luckily for me, it was not deep. It was scary and freezing. I managed not to lose my boots which were weighed down with icy water. I walked in those wet soggy boots for the rest of that winter, they never dried up. I told no one, especially not my mother, for she was a very strict and incredibly thrifty woman, perhaps not by choice. Those boots were meant to be worn until I grew out of them. Raising three children on one measly salary, was a feat, requiring sacrifices and creative solutions.

Has Social Media Become A Tool Of Social Oppression?

Online Censorship picked up momentum over the last few years, and as a result, many suddenly had something to feel offended by. Are being woke, censorship, and cancel culture intimately connected by obscure puritanical roots or is there a more sinister plot at work?

Will Insistent Droughts Lead To Water Wars?

If you type “water shortage” in Google you’ll get about 86,300,000 results, whereas the term Water wars gets 654 million results, clearly indicating that many of us are feeling disturbed and perhaps imagining the worst case scenarios for the near future.

Coffee Rituals

From stovetop, drips, home espresso machines to Nespresso, the choices are endless when it comes to choosing how we want to engage in this daily ritualistic pleasure. This post is dedicated to stovetop coffee makers. A stovetop Moka, in my opinion, is the best, cheapest and simplest way to really enjoy the ritual of coffee making at home.

Make It Worth My While

I’m an existing customer and I’m your best customer. Make it worth my while and watch me turn into a loyal customer.

Growing your business should not solely focus on getting new clients. Getting your current customers to appreciate, value, and continue to use your products or services more often is just as important and provides surprising opportunities for increased revenue. So stop rewarding only new customers.

Can You Trust Your Intuition?

You have no idea how many times you’ve averted danger, simply by listening to your inner voice. When you chose to take an alternate route, leave early or later, or maybe cancel the appointment altogether because you were feeling uneasy about a situation. You might even twist an ankle or you might miss your flight, along with a variety of apparent mishaps that turn out to be blessings in disguise, so to speak.