On the Occasion of My 4th Anniversary

It was four years ago today that I decided to start writing and posting here daily.

I had watched and studied (and shamelessly stole from) Chris Brogan, who wrote and posted daily at www.chrisbrogan.com (I am proud to call Chris a friend, and he’s been a great teacher). I also studied Seth Godin, who sometimes posted more than once a day. I made the decision to join them, and December 28th was the day I began.

I have posted her every day with the exception of 10 days in August of 2010. During those 10 days I traveled to Lhasa, Tibet and visited Base Camp 1 on Mt. Everest. I thought it would be poor form to blog while I should be taking in the experience. If I had it to do over again, I would have just written about the experience in real time.

When I started this blog, I had no idea what I was supposed to do here. I was concerned that people would judge me for what I had written, and I worried about other people’s perceptions. But when I started writing on the 28th, I decided to write without any concern about what others think, choosing instead to believe that the people who needed the idea I wrote about would find it when they needed it–and the people who didn’t need it would skip past it without a second thought.

I also believed when I started that my best work would be the work people valued most. It hasn’t worked out the way. Oftentimes, the work I believed would be most valuable doesn’t get a second glance and the work I believed to be a “too simple” idea have proven to have legs.

Over the past four years, I have been graciously invited into the community of salespeople, sales organization, sales trainers, sales coaches, and sales consultants. I was invited into a small tribe when there were only 8 or 9 of us who decided we were stronger together than apart. The people who had invited me into the tribe are gone, but some of us remain, and we have now grown the tribe to just over 40 people who think and write about sales.

Some people have struggled to understand why we promote each other’s work when we work in the same space. They view this as helping our “competitors.” We don’t view it that way. We see it has helping each other, and we see it as helping point the communities we serve at good content.

I’ve also been invited into a community of fellow entrepreneurs, speakers, marketing types, and all-around hustlers who have built their own platforms. You can find some people in that community over at www.ownermag.com.

A few years into the adventure that is my writing life, I had one consultant call me to criticize me for sharing my ideas. He used very direct language and attacked me for not understanding how intellectual property works. He said by giving away my ideas, no one had any reason to hire me. He criticized me for providing a link to my archives, believing it was wrong to help people find what they needed without being able to charge them for it. Then he asked me how I was getting so much work. I failed in my attempt to explain to him just how much the world has changed.

The opportunities that have to come to be through my writing life over the last four years have taken me across the country and around a good part of the world. I’ve made friends in every corner of the earth. I’ve also had the privilege to speak to and consult with companies that measure their revenue in tens of millions of dollars to tens of billions of dollars.

I have had the great pleasure of helping thousands of individual salespeople, hundreds of sales managers, and dozens of sales organizations–none of which would have been possible without this blog and the ability to share here.

There are only a few things that have had such a positive impact on my life. That list includes my mother (who raised four kids alone while launching her own entrepreneurial adventure, and for whom I have the deepest respect), my wife, and my three children. I’ve been fortunate enough to add many more relationships to this list through this blog.

Thanks for being here with me!