Find Your Voice
If you are going to create for a living and be successful at it, you must find your voice. We are marketers, designers, writers, parents. We are builders of everything. Truly though, we are not really expressing ourselves, not speaking truth, until we find our own voice. It is our essence, laid bare for the world to see. The problem is that many of us do not know how to find our voice. Simply put, there is no easy answer. I know for a fact that I haven’t fully found mine yet. It’s a never ending journey, not a quest for the Grail, so much, but a constant evaluating, a consistant...
read moreThe Art of Quiet Influence
Quite a lot is being said about influence. Klout, Grader, and an array of other sites will grade your level of influence, and that is quickly becoming the standard of measurement for how we are doing on the web. Many online marketing people will teach you to expand your audience, how to use email lists, how to convert pageviews into sales, and teach you about the scarcity principal. They will tell you all about how to gain social proof and create authority. Many of these people are full of crap. Spending your time working to convert viewers into buyers is a soul-destroying waste of your...
read moreEat. Breathe. Run.
The hardest thing for me about running isn’t getting off my ass and doing it. It isn’t trying to beat yesterday’s time. The hardest thing about running is trying to beat the person I was. When I was 20 I could run forever and I hated it. Maybe I was burnt out after 10 years of soccer and track. Maybe it was because the Army was making me. Either way, I hated it. So when I left the Army, I came to a physical standstill. I didn’t run again until 4 months ago. I’m 41. In my head I can see the runner I once was and kick myself almost every morning for letting it...
read moreSoccer is More Than Life, It’s Business
Haruki Murakami wrote a book titled What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. In it he states; “When I’m running I don’t have to talk to anybody and don’t have to listen to anybody. This is a part of my day I can’t do without.” This one statement made perfect sense to me, and a big reason this book is quickly becoming an integral part of my present life. As running is life for him, soccer, is life for me. When I play, I am focused on nothing else but the game. To me it is an extension of who I am off the pitch. Soccer, like running, can offer us many...
read moreWhat I Should Have Learned 20 Years Ago (The Father Son Talk)
For whatever reason I am in an incredible mood today. For almost two months now I have quit smoking, I have started running, and have been playing indoor soccer. I’m feeling much better about myself, and for so many other reasons I have a beautiful life. All of these things I done to take a new direction with my life have got me thinking about a lot of the positive things I have learned along the way. Yep, you guessed it, this is a retrospective, warm-fuzzies, epiphany post. So bear with me while I get all of this sappiness out of my system. What have I learned? Well, a few small, but...
read moreThe Simplest Thing You Can Do to Get Your Blog to be a Success
Do you want your blog to be successful? Sure you do. The problem is when you first start your blog, it can be awkward. We struggle with getting our words out there, but we can also be afraid that people won’t like what we have to say, or even how we say it. Often we settle for a watered down, politically correct, beige version of what is really in our head. Want your blog to succeed? Don’t dilute your thoughts. Want throngs of adoring fans hanging on your every word? Be who you are. Simply, unabashedly, shamelessly, authentically, 100% you. Why will this work? People connect...
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