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E-ssential
Message # 094:
Differentiation starts at home.
If you run your own business, your company's differentiation may be indistinguishable from your personal differentiation. If you work in a larger company, your personal differentiation has everything to do with the special skills you bring to the table; it's the reason you were hired in the first place.
Once you start on the journey to discover your differentation, your journey will at some point include a stop at your parents' house.
With a degree in linguistics, my father had a facility with words and a gift for language. So when he joined the French Foreign Legion during the Second World War, he was put in charge of translating messages for the French, British and American troops -- and sometimes delivering them in person under enemy fire. After the war, he became a professional translator, and worked his way up to become head of the translation department at McGill University.
My mother is a survivor of the Holocaust. Deported on March 7, 1944, she spent almost a year at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, the largest killing grounds of the Nazis. Surviving beatings, interrogations and the selections by the infamous Dr. Mengele, she was then forced on a three-day death march through the mountains in the bitter, bitter cold of January 1945. 
From Wroclaw on the Polish-German border, she was transported to Ravensbruck and then to Neustadt. When the camp was liberated by the Russian army on May 3, 1945, she was taken for dead as she lay motionless on the ground, too weak to move.
No one would be surprised at how an experience like that would shatter anyone's spirit and joy of life. And yet, if you met my mother today, you'd find someone in love with the world.
She doesn't need a reason -- or even music -- to dance around my back yard.
As an author, advertising copywriter and speaker, I always knew where I got my facility with words and my gift for language. But I never fully understood how and why I inspire audiences until I saw that my mother's ability to survive is also my ability to survive -- and her passion for life is also my passion for life.
No wonder they call me a motivational speaker.
That's what I found at my parents' house. What would you find if you looked in yours?
P.S. My mother wrote her book to document her experience in Auschwitz and her return. In the words of Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, 'her testimony is chastening, terrifying and spiritually uplifting.' Buy this book here and she will personally sign it for you.
Who is Michel Neray and What's The Essential Message?
The Essential Message is about discovering your true differentiation and then learning how to communicate it in the most compelling way. But higher sales, greater alignment of sales and marketing and a stronger brand position aren't the only reasons why so many independent professionals, entrepreneurs and emerging companies rave about The Essential Message.
Clients also say that one of the biggest advantages of the Essential Message approach is how it helps them gain the confidence, momentum and resilience that can only come from being absolutely clear about their strengths and unique difference – as companies and as individuals.
The Essential Message was created by Michel Neray based on 25 years as an award-winning copywriter, an entrepreneur, a tradeshow pitchman and a senior sales and marketing executive. (He also rides motorcycles, does whitewater canoeing, and has his 2nd degree black belt in karate.)
For information about our corporate facilitation, copywriting and consulting services, or booking Michel to speak at your conference, please call 416 534-4766 or link to www.EssentialMessage.com.
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