Note: The title of this post was taken directly from John Ortberg’s book. I live a comparably safe life. I crave comfort and consistency in the flesh, yet my spirit yearns to be stretched and made stronger and more resilient. My job is not much different. As an internet marketing consultant, I’ve stuck to what I know and what I’m comfortable with, which is managing paid search campaigns and website conversion. I’ve been successful at this, but part of me has been looking for ways to stretch beyond my comfort zone. I’ve made various attempts, but always retreated back to my safe place when I lost sight of the shore. Then, a year ago a series of events happened which started me on a journey, professionally and spiritually, which I would like to share with you. I stepped out of the boat. JUNE 2009 A marketing friend of mine who I had helped with a few projects called me. I hadn’t heard from her in a year or two. She asked if I would assess one of her client’s internet marketing strategy. The client was a medical practice right down the street from my house. I had worked with doctors before, and wasn’t very enthusiastic – their market was small, they typically had small or no advertising budgets, and medical is very competitive online. However this friend had always been very sweet and supportive of me, and I wanted to help her however I could. JULY 2009 When I met with the marketing director for lunch, I was surprised by what I discovered. Turns out this...

Most businesses that have a mission statement probably spent a lot of time and thought (and money in some cases) carefully crafting it.  Over zealous and well meaning executives and consultants meticulously toiled (and probably feuded) over getting it ‘just right’ in hopes that it would both pull their team together, and at the same time impress prospects enough to want to do business with such a company. While no doubt there are many examples of truly great mission statements, for the most part I think they get trivialized or forgotten altogether by employees and largely ignored by their customers and prospects.  My hunch is this is due, in large part, to the fact that most mission statements are too long,  too cliche and too ‘formal’. What if your company was forced to declare a one word mission statement.  This word would have to be an action (verb).  Something that said “Billy, I want you to take this business, go out into the world and  ______.  Such a mission statement would certainly be easier to remember.  It could even be written (or symbolized) on every surface of your company to help remind people.  It could even make for a nice tattoo. With this blog post I am kicking off a collaborative project to research and publish the most powerful and effective one word mission statements.  I’d like to challenge well established, successful, and well known businesses to go through the effort of selecting their one word mission. So...

“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.” - Epictetus (Greek philosopher associated with the Stoics, AD 55-c.135) What other ancient wisdom would help social marketers, or all marketers for that matter?

Dear People Who Create and Distribute Awesome Marketing Thought Leadership Content: I can’t stand it any longer.  Every day for the last 5 years, some awesome piece of thought leadership content comes into my inbox.  There must be hundreds, if not thousands of webinars, virtual conferences, blog posts, presentations, whitepapers, and case studies I would love to digest.  I really would.  But unless something changes I will probably only consume 1% of what I crave, simply because YOU’RE NOT MAKING IT EASY for me to grab this content on my iPod (or iPad) WHEN IT’S IN FRONT OF ME. Big Idea: You early adopters that made sure all your content was on iTunes but abandoned it…  You gave up too quick.  The rest of us needed time to catch up, and now we’re thirsty.  You’re putting barriers between me and the drinking fountain. I’ve been an internet marketing consultant for 10 years, and by no means am I a cutting edge adopter of every social/RSS/tagging thingamaJIGee.  But I also don’t think I’m a laggard when it comes to how I use the internet and consume content. I can’t imagine how corporate marketers that you are trying to reach, particularly older CMOs must feel. I have never seen a single, clear, option to “PUT THIS ON YOUR iPOD”, directly next to the piece of content, on all the emails, landing pages, event invites, post event followups, etc. that I’ve received.  And it doesn’t matter if...

This video was brought to my attention from my friend, Mark Sink. I find it to be both interesting, and challenging.  I hope you will as well. What are some videos that help get you on the right track?