A recent post on the Viral Garden got me wondering how many small business people finally understanding how to blog for business and connect with customers through Facebook and twitter are hearing us dismiss blogging, and diagnose social media as terminal and thinking they’ve missed the boat. I’m here to tell you, Mr. and Ms. Small Business, the ship is just coming into sight for you. Stay focused on your goals and strategy, and spend time delivering value and encouraging communication with your customers. If it’s working (don’t waste...

OK, everybody. Steve Woodruff put me at the helm of Five in the Morning today (I know, what was he thinking?!) and I’m going to rouse you from your mental slumber with a few inspiring posts from some of my favorite bloggers. It’s time to stop talking about how awful everything is and open ourselves up to opportunities. What’s that? You have to get a few more things off your chest? Go right ahead. I’ll wait. Ready? I think I’ve got something for everyone here. Have at it! Get the job I never miss Penelope Trunk’s (Brazen...

Last fall I read a WSJ article about “Mystery Worshippers.” These professionals are like mystery shoppers only instead of rating customer service and inventory they rate things like pew orderliness and the length and strength of the sermon. I can’t get this article off my mind because it means that people are shopping around for their churches. And if they’re shopping around for church – unimaginable when I was a kid – what does that mean for businesses? More than ever before, people are expecting and demanding exactly...

Every time I get involved in a discussion about social media and how they fit in the marketing/PR puzzle, talk turns to rules. “How many people should I follow on twitter?” “How much is too much self-promotion?” “How many times a week should I blog?” “What percent of my tweets can be personal/off topic?” My answer is always the same: I don’t know. Sure, I can make suggestions, but only after asking a lot more questions. If anyone tells you she has definitive answers, especially without spending some time...

So the word on the street is that 2009 is the “year of small business.” And everyone’s looking for the marketing silver bullet. How to integrate old and new? How can I use Facebook? What role might twitter play in building my business? Where do I begin? What’s the ROI of all this friending, tweeting and linking? As David Meerman Scott is fond of asking, what’s the ROI of putting your pants on in the morning? There are no easy answers. Building a business is more about faith than fortune. It’s more about passion than profit....

Disclaimer: I started writing this post before my good friend Scott Hepburn wrote this post. They’re great complements to one another, though, dontcha think? Matt Bacak is “The Powerful Promoter” an old-school (as old school as you can get online) email and direct response marketing coach who writes Dan Kennedy style books like Secrets of the Internet Millionaire Mind. I don’t care for his style. I wouldn’t use it myself. I suspect he’s a dying breed. But I have a question for everyone out there who is calling him an idiot...

I used to think optimists were out of touch with reality. Wide-eyed Pollyannas who refused to see that tough challenges lie in wait for all of us, ready to pounce like meaty-pawed tigers. But then I started writing for business journals. After a few months of interviewing successful entrepreneurs and CEOs I detected a pattern. They were all optimists. This punched a big hole in my Pollyanna theory. Slowly I discovered that true optimism – the powerful stuff that fuels leaders and visionaries - isn’t rooted in blithely ignoring reality....

My friend and I were having lunch on a restaurant patio the other day when a lime green Lamborghini roared past. “Your son would have gone bananas if he had seen that,” she said with a chuckle. She knows my teenager loves classic rock, skateboarding and expensive cars - and that he’s intense, artistic, quick-witted and wants to be everybody’s friend. My family and close friends know they’ll find my daughter by my side as I roll out the crust for Thanksgiving pies, that we’ll have to call my middle-schooler three...

Note: If you already know this stuff, please be on the lookout for someone who needs to see this and forward the link to them. Someone like the guy Mack Collier called out yesterday. Bless his heart. He’s like the Avon lady who solicited my mom on Halloween night. Mom opened the door to a pretty little ballerina and a pig-tailed UPS delivery girl. “Trick-or-treat!” they said shyly, as their mom watched from the street. As Mom offered them some goodies, the ballerina slipped an Avon book into her hand. Mom thanked the girls, cheerfully wished...

There was an interesting article about global defeat in the June issue of Psychology Today. It seems we’re hardwired to give up easily. Thousands of years of cutting our losses rather than risk death by saber-toothed tiger make us more inclined to run for cover than stay and fight. “Today, an overwhelming sense of helplessness is a blunt instrument, less necessary for survival than it once was because our options are vastly more numerous,” the article says. “Nonetheless, we still carry within us the tendency to feel easily trumped...