One of our favorite Quirkipreneurs, Nicole Fende, is ready to start her rockstar-big book launch tour, but her mascot and chief roadie, Fluffy, has gone missing!! (Oh NOEZ!)

Despite the rumors swirling around Twitter, Emmit swears he did not lure the number-crunching kitty away with promises of catnip, nor are the Circus elephants  hiding him in their trunks. (I double-checked, just in case.)

So. You bought into the hype about Pinterest (Um. Sorry about my part in that!) You got yourself all signed up, and you’ve pinned a cake recipe or two.  You’ve stared at endless wedding planner collections. You ‘ve declared that you WILL try the DIY lightbulb terrarium project, and maybe repaint your end tables a loverly shade of blue.

But you’ve got no clue how to make this work for your business.

Don’t worry!
I’m here to inspire you.
Or maybe confuse you.

But either way,  I’m here!
And I have a plan! Granted, it’s a mostly untested plan, because like almost everyone else I’m pretty new to Pinterest. But I have ideas, IDEAS I say!

Step one in the plan?

DON’T approach Pinterest as a “marketing tool”. Forget about the traffic you’ve been promised from Pinterest, and start a personal account. Use it as a tool for inspiration, for both work and personal projects. Use it for relationship building. Use it for research. Use it as the creative porn visual crack eye-candy curation tool it was meant to be.

Over the past a week or two, every Social Media guru, tech site and small business blog exploded with articles about using visual bookmarking site Pinterest to drive web traffic, each of them screaming “If your brand isn’t on Pinterest, you’re leaving money on the table, Baby! ”

And though I haven’t seen any stats, I’m pretty sure that there were more blog posts written about Pinterest than there are actual Pinterest users. Seriously. I can make up the statistics if you’d like…

Ok, fine. Since you asked:

(click to embiggen)

Those of you who follow me on Twitter already know I’m a shameless fan of Jenny Lawson, @TheBloggess.  What you don’t know is that it’s not just her absurd humor, Texas-sized heart, or habit of adopting stray taxidermied animals that makes me feel so connected to her.

It’s things like this tweet:

And my twin brother:

You’ll need a bit of backstory to see the connection, so bear with me, k?

“I don’t see a big tent… do YOU see a big tent, Ollie?”

“No, Stanley, but I do see Tori standing there under a striped umbrella, looking a bit like a wannabe tightrope walker expecting a thunderstorm…”

“Don’t look now… butted in a Marx Brother from outside the frame, “But she’s trying to shoot an elephant in my pajamas!”

Thus endeth today’s absurd exercise in I-didn’t-know-how-to-start-this-post. No, there’s not a point to it, so you can stop looking.

But there IS a point
to this Big Tent stuff.

The last few posts here have offered an early glimpse of  the Circus Serene metaphor/brand, and where I thought the brand was going.  Many detours and a year later,  some of those ideas have become reality, a few were ‘red-lighted’, and others are still in rehearsal.  But one thing *not* included in those posts, or the early metaphor?

The Big Tent.

As part of my plea for your vote as finalist the Tastiest Brand awards,  I’m sharing the origins of the Circus Serene imagery and concept, as described back on MindTweaks, in 2010.  My method? A combination of metaphoring, helper-mousing, and just a touch of piracy – enjoy!

The other day, I told you about Havi’s Pirate Queen expeditions, how she lets a mouse provide metaphors for her business,  and then I announced that I wanted a metaphor of my very own.

A metaphor to help me better get a handle on this business stuff. A metaphor that  made it fun. A metaphor that made it not scary-and-over-whelming and HUGE.

As part of my plea for your vote as finalist the Tastiest Brand awards, I thought I’d share the origins of the Circus Serene imagery and concept, as originally described back on MindTweaks, just about two years ago.  My method? A combination of metaphoring, helper-mousing, and just a touch of piracy – enjoy!

I’m Running Off To Join The Circus!

(Pretty much as published on MindTweaks, with a few minor… erm… tweaks)

Yes, yes…  I know it’s St. Patty’s Day, not April Fools day.  And no, I didn’t get totally confused by the switch to Daylight Savings Time last weekend.   My run-away plans will all make more sense by the time I’m done explaining…  at least, I think they will.

But meanwhile?  I’m running off to join the circus.

This whole business is related to the renovations going on in the background of the site,  and it fits with my “Places, Everything!” theme for the year, too.  But mostly, it’s about the Metaphor Mouse stuff that Havi Brooks has been writing so much about over the past few weeks.   You can ignore the mouse part for now, if you like, and just focus on understanding the metaphor business.  After all, the mouse is…  just a metaphor.