A couple of weeks ago, solopreneur and PR pro extraordinaire, Kellye Crane, wrote a blog post title, “Three People You Must Read.”

She recommended Valeria Maltoni, David Meerman Scott, and Jeremiah Owyang.

I concur!

Then Justin Goldsborough followed suit and recommended three of his own.

While Ingrid Abboud aka Griddy aka Brigitte was vacationing in Greece (and kept texting me photos as if I wouldn’t be insanely jealous) she asked me to write a guest post. This is the post I wrote. So if you read it there, there isn’t anything new to see here…except the comments. And, let’s be real, those are always way more entertaining than the actual post anyway. Continue Reading »

Up at 5 a.m. Check email, Facebook, Twitter, G+, LinkedIn groups and discussions, text messages, blog traffic, web traffic, and PostRank analytics all while brushing your teeth and feeding kids or pets.

Make time to exercise, do some writing, get ready for work.

Work a full day.

Rush home to make and have dinner with your family.

Check email, Facebook, Twitter, G+, LinkedIn groups and discussions, text messages, blog traffic, web traffic, and PostRank analytics.

Sleep by 11 p.m. Do it again the next day.

How familiar does this sound? Maybe there is a tweak or two in there, but if you’re an entrepreneur, your days are long, your weeks are long, your months are long, and your years fly by while you’re left wondering where your time went. Continue Reading »

I’ve been doing a lot of self-talk lately. You know. The kind where you have to convince yourself to behave differently than you feel because you’re a leader and you set the example.

You see, the launch of Spin Sucks Pro didn’t go exactly as planned and I’m not in control of what needs to be changed and fixed for it to be valuable to you and others. And that drives me batty. No, it drives me insane.

I don’t like not being in control and really wish I knew how to program and design so I could work 36 hours in a row and get it all fixed…at least to a  point that is presentable and we’re comfortable charging for the content we’ve spent the last eight months creating.

But I don’t know how to program and design (and here I thought I could do everything) and it’s out of my control.

And it’s stressing me out. Big time.

I’m also feeling sorry for myself, mostly because I’m exhausted. I can’t remember the last time I had a single day off. I keep waiting for Spin Sucks Pro to generate revenue (which, of course, it can’t right now because of things beyond my control) so we can hire some content creators and I can, I don’t know, do my job of leading a company toward our vision. Continue Reading »

Are happy people dumb?

I just read that phrase in a Harvard Business Review blog and was offended. Because I’m happy. And I’m not dumb. But, of course, it enticed me to read on.

The blogger, Shawn Achor, says,

These sentiments are not uncommon. I believe we have a cultural assumption that happy people are anti-intellectual, delusional, or shallow. We’ve all heard the saying that “ignorance is bliss.” But, in truth, society has a fundamental ignorance about bliss.

Here’s part of the problem. Everyone knows someone who is brilliant and unhappy. And everyone knows someone who is successful and not happy. Continue Reading »

Yeah. I know. I spend a lot of time reading the blogs at Harvard Business Review. I can’t help it. So much of what they write is so far from reality that it’s great for me to read what they’re thinking in think tanks without any real world application.

They have the university approach – really smart people who get theory, but have never applied it. And I love to read the theory so I can figure out how to apply it, both for us and our clients (and, of course, Project Jack Bauer).

And then, I find something that makes a lot of sense and validates my thinking.

That happened yesterday afternoon when I ran across, “Finding Profit In a World of Free.” A 12-ish minute podcast interview with Saul Berman, vice president and global lead partner for strategy consulting at IBM Global Business Services and author of Not for Free: Revenue Strategies for a New World, explores how and why we’ll pay for customized experiences and services. Now, I haven’t read his book. I’ve only listened to the podcast (and really, only about half of it kept my attention). But I like what he has to say about the controversial topic of paid content. Continue Reading »

I was reading Umair Haque’s review of Davos titled, “Ten Things You’re Not Allowed to Say at Davos.” For those of you who don’t know (and why would you, if you’re not the CEO of a Fortune 10 company or, well, Bono), Davos, Switzerland is where the upper, upper, upper (did I say upper?) echelon meet for the World Economic Summit annual meeting. And it took place last week.

Umair takes a tongue-in-cheek look at the summit and the “tiny hint of a feeling that Davos isn’t exactly fighting to tooth and nail to right the ship — but to hoard the food, and puncture the lifeboats.”

Of the 10 things you’re not allowed to say at Davos but he said anyway, there is one that really sticks out to me. Continue Reading »

This blog post first ran on TheTop10Blog so if you read it there, move along to the comments, where you always find the real gold anyway.

It shouldn’t come as any surprise to you that 2011 is the year of integration.

This past year you got to play with social media tools and figure out which were most applicable to your business. Now it’s time to stop playing and integrate your traditional, digital, and mobile campaigns into one marketing and communication program.

Not convinced?  Following are 10 reasons integration is crucial this year. Continue Reading »

I have a feeling this week is going to be like a ghost town so I’m going to do aggregate posts that will help you plan for and do your jobs more efficiently in 2011.

Today’s post is a list of the best social media trends for 2011. I am only doing five links so you don’t get overwhelmed because, well, there is A LOT of content out there and it’s easy to get overwhelmed.

I haven’t fully decided on the lists for the rest of the week so if there is something you’d like to see, the comments section is yours.

So here we go, the five best (plus the two from Spin Sucks) blog posts that list social media trends for you to include in your 2011 planning. Continue Reading »

Does it feel like an off week to you? I fully realize NO ONE will be working next week, but I didn’t expect it this week. Between final interviews for our chief content officer position (BTW, we are now on the hunt for a chief marketing officer), our social media trends webinar, meetings with potential investors, and a big deadline for Project Jack Bauer today, I looked up and suddenly realized no one was working yesterday. What gives?!

While you ponder that or get ready to rub in my face that you aren’t working again until January, I bring you the top five stories of the week. Continue Reading »

I’d be lying if I said Arment Dietrich hasn’t had a lot of change since October of 2008. It started with the bank cutting off our access to capital, then we got letters during the holidays from clients expressing their wish to discontinue our services because of the economy, then we did (what we thought) a really deep lay-off, then we had to do another round of lay-offs, then we fired some clients, then we started to get comfortable with the idea that flat is the new up, and that’s when I decided to put Project Jack Bauer into play.

But change. Change is good, right?

Not according to a field of research known as “terror management theory.” It has shed light on the connection between people’s reactions to change and their awareness of death. Seems odd, but I’ve seen it happen within my own organization. People compare the change that is happening at work to what might happen when they die. As in real death.

According to Harvard Business Review, the idea is that people go to great lengths to repress awareness of mortality. Continue Reading »