I’m about to give birth to my third child and like any new parent, everything takes on a strange new significance. The fact that this week has been extraordinarily beautiful at my farm tells me that I’m where I’m supposed to be. The date of this new “baby” is equally significant. I launched both The Delahaye Group and KDPaine & Partners on my father’s birthday, March 31st. But this time, it will be an October baby. Coincidentally, 61 years ago my parents were anticipating my imminent arrival with as much (if not more) excitement and trepidation.
For my mother, my arrival was preceded by numerous unsuccessful attempts to give my father the child he so longed for. For my father, I was his first. Knowing him, he was probably totally clueless about what was about to happen; however, he knew one thing. Just as his father had read to him, he would read to me from Kipling’s Just So Stories. So my earliest memory was my father, reading to me, and placing great emphasis on me when he read Kipling’s oft-repeated phrase, “O my best beloved.” That phrase has always been how I feel about people who read my words.
As I get ready to launch Paine Publishing, my third company, I can empathize with both of them. For me, “O my best beloved” is how I think of our readers. I also share my father’s cluelessness on some fronts. In many ways, Paine Publishing is a first for me. This is my first company that will focus primarily on what my family has done for generations: telling stories, educating, and doing all those other great things that writing, editing, and publishing can accomplish. It is also the first one for which the majority of business will happen online, and the majority of communications will be social. I’m unbelievably stoked to take this plunge into what feels at the same time familiar, but is in reality, a very new world of publishing and training.
And, like my mother who was no doubt thinking, I worry about all those things that could go wrong. Having started and sold two companies (not counting the cleaning business I started at 15), part of me is reliving all of their ups and downs, the moments of sheer terror, and the incredible euphoria when things go right .
But the bottom line is that I am more excited about this new venture than anything I’ve ever done before. I know that the communications world is focused on measurement these days, as I have been for 20 + years. The difference right now is that while many of the old metrics are discredited or considered mundane, the new era of measurement promises unbelievable depth of insight, and therefore a lot of fun for people like me. It is an era that appeals to both sides of my inner problem solver—the math lover and the listener.
I was probably still in diapers when I first heard my father promise me, his “best beloved” to provide me with a good education and good writing because with those you can do anything.
So here is what we promise you from Paine Publishing:
- We promise to educate you on how to do define your success and measure it in accordance with industry standards and best practices.
- We promise to provide content that is not only educational, but entertaining and compelling.
- We promise to be vendor-neutral in our writing and make recommendations based on our perceived value, not a sponsor’s agenda.
- We promise you access to the best thinkers and writers we can find.
- We can’t promise to solve all your problems, but we will work as hard as humanly possible to find solutions to whatever you throw at us.
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