North Star has welcomed an amazing new client to our roster, and we kicked off the relationship in a most invigorating way – promoting both tremendous education for us and, in Michelle’s case – quite a bit of soreness as well.

Chiron Sports Performance is a Bloomfield Hills-based business established by Dr. Chibuzo “Casey” Ohanaja and his wife Heather Ohanaja. We gave it the generic label of “business” rather than sticking it in a category because there really isn’t a category for what they do at Chiron.

Except to say that if you’re an athlete, you will want to know Chiron.

This is more than a sports medicine practice; it’s a science lab for athletes. They apply science, technology, medical insight and Dr. Oh’s own background as an athlete to assess your performance, your risk of injury and your overall athletic makeup.

They generate your own personal Athlete Blueprint – think full 3D model of your body – complete with tailored data and actions steps to help you prevent injuries, recover from any you’ve had and enhance your overall performance. And then, they train you. They push you. You become the very best athlete you have ever been.

And they didn’t just tell us about all this. They showed us – by putting Michelle through the 90-minute testing process. Ever the trooper ready for an adventure, Michelle went through all the motions – the jumping, the stretching, the turning, the reaching . . . all of it – while monitors recorded her every motion and sent data to the system to analyze what was going on.

It was quite the experience, with the entire analytical team and Dr. Oh himself on hand for every second of it.

The story of this family and its practice has been a real rush to jump into, and even better will be the stories of the athletes who will be healthier and better players because of what they will learn at Chiron.

As for post-testing Michelle? She loaded up on electrolytes and bravely soldiered through the soreness – knowing she had learned a lot and performed like the champion she is.

Just like we would expect all Chiron clients to be.

This is a curious take on a species that spends most of its time scrolling through the content on its phone these days – and we’re pretty sure it’s not all videos and pictures of cats. (Even though we are big fans of pictures of cats.)

But this narrative has been in the business world for as long as we can remember: Keep it short. Keep it pithy. If it takes more than 30 seconds to read it, it’s too long. Everyone has a short attention span. No one reads.

This conventional wisdom is preventing a lot of companies who have great stories to tell from telling those stories – because they misread the apparent trends and they don’t look deeply enough into what’s really going on.

The idea that “no one reads” might be defensible if you’re talking about putting out information to the world at large. Roughly 999 of the next 1,000 random people who receive information from a given company probably won’t get past the first sentence. And that seems to affirm the notion that no one reads.

Yet there are reasons most people don’t read most things, and none of them justify you giving short shrift to the substance of your company’s story. When someone declines to read something, it’s because:

1. The topic of what’s been written is not of interest to that person.
2. The writing is terrible and neither easy nor enjoyable to read.
3. The reader has no idea who wrote it and no particular reason to trust it.
4. The information being conveyed doesn’t provide any value to the reader. It’s not helpful in any meaningful way.
5. The writing sounds exactly like 100 other things the reader sees every day. It’s formulaic and dull.

These are the things people don’t read, and who can blame them?

And yet those same people are staring at screens all day long. Some of it is looking at pictures and videos, sure, but they’re also looking for things to read that are worth their attention.

So give it to them.

The material we write for our clients gets read because it’s:

• Targeted to reach people who already have a vested interest in our clients and what they do.
• Designed to tell the audience something that will be of value to them.
• Written by seasoned, professional storytellers who write with an engaging style.
• Written to be enjoyed and understood. We don’t tell your audience you “leverage optimized solutions.” We tell them what you actually do, and they get it.

People do read. You read this.

Now who is reading your story? Or is no one reading it because you’re not telling it, because someone told you, “No one reads”?

Let’s fix that right now.

Coming soon, a profile of Paul Glantz, the founder of Emagine Entertainment who recently sold the venture for $111 million, in DBusiness Magazine. You will see Dan’s byline on the piece, but this was a challenging story to write and both Michelle and Angie had considerable influence (all for the better) on how the profile ended up.

Congratulations to our client Victors Aviation, which just celebrated its first two graduates becoming licensed pilots. And congratulations to Greg Aerts and Hayden Houghton for this tremendous achievement.

Congratulations to our client Stellr and its CEO Claudia Miclaus, which recently rebranded as Stellr Global, and is testing the intriguing new platform MyStellr – which will provide a single place for a person’s entire reputation to be presented.

Michelle recently performed in the Old Time Radio Show at the Troy Historic Village, this time mastering an Irish accent as Mrs. O’Reilly, whose social gathering gets disrupted by a plumbing catastrophe. Michelle has been part of the cast for five years now, and it’s always a great time.

Angie recently helped a client avoid a major miscue in a business proposal that could land them a seven-figure account – and she did the whole thing in less than a day.

Dan recently got a new purple shirt, and when he wears it he looks like, well . . . Dan.

We just received an email from Senator John Thune with the subject line, “Please don’t delete.” That worked about as well as someone telling us not to think of an elephant, and we did not follow the instructions.

Happy birthday Tony Calabrese!

For one day (and one day only) we diverged from our study of the Gospel of John to study this passage from Romans 5:3-5. It says:

“Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

Our thought on this is such: Hope does not put you to shame, but many people are reluctant to “hope for too much,” because that’s how they avoid being disappointed. But the point of hope is not to try to underpredict your outcomes and avoid disappointment. It’s to believe that good things are possible and they’re worth pursuing and holding out for. God has given us an understanding of these good things through the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Do not give up hope, and that applies to all good things. Don’t be afraid to hope. Don’t consider it silly to hope. Hope will never put you to shame. And if you’re going to overthink the worst, make sure you overthink the best, too.