"The future is already here - it's just not evenly distributed." - William Gibson The following is a sponsored post for Cloud Powered Work. All the ideas are mine. They just want you to think about this space a little bit. Are you? I just finished up a Skype call with someone for his book project.
Wow, your out of office message stinks. As an email marketer, every time I send out a letter, I get a chance to peruse the "out of office" and bounce replies. Some of them are so amazing. "It's our busy season." "I'm away at the beach." "If you need this, do ____.
I took my kids to a water park the other day, and around certain areas, there are chairs set up for parents so they can watch their kids play in the giant toilets pools. Notice something in this picture? People have "staked out" their chairs, but technically don't need them.
Sometimes a shift happens in culture and we don't notice it, or don't think it has much to do with us, or we just don't care. Other times, we should perk up and take heed. I think this is one of those times.
It's so easy to get set in our thinking. I spent 2013 working hard on creating courses, and paid a little less attention to my media efforts. I've also started work on some rebranding efforts. All of it gives you and I a lot to think about.
My son is working away on a browser-based game on our new Dell XPS18 computer. But by "computer," I mean it's a very portable computer that feels a lot more like a big-ass tablet with a stand and a keyboard.
The amount of mental energy we expend by trying to be right all the time is a waste. I have come to learn that it's a lot easier to be wrong from time to time, and that the process of being wrong c...
One way the whole cloud powered work experience has changed my business life is that everyone in my company can work from the beach and not hide that fact. The following is a sponsored post for Cloud Powered Work, but beyond them being kind enough to give me some loot to have this specific conversation, they haven't influenced my words at all.
Here's the truth about social media marketing as I see it right now: there are three camps people sit in with it all. 1.) Love it, but not exactly making it work for their business. 2.) Are doing it, but grudgingly and without much hope of seeing a result. 3.)
I was a latecomer to Instagram. I didn't much care for it. I called it "fake record covers of your boring life." And now, I much prefer Instagram to Facebook. I like the little vignettes of people's lives I see in photos. I like it more than Flickr.
I read recently that the very simple act of walking barefoot on grass is a powerful and natural stress reliever. In the last year alone, the US paid over $42 million in losses related to stress and anxiety (lost time, medication, etc). It's big business.
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The reason most companies and people have a challenge with their marketing efforts is that they're trying to market and not own a relationship. I found myself wandering through Boston's Faneuil Hall the other day and happened upon the band, the Ballroom Thieves playing for a crowd.
I wanted to share a thought with you about ownership. Ownership starts from within. You start by realizing one day that you can own your choices. It grows. You accept that you can choose your goals. Then, you realize you can create a kingdom or a world or whatever you want to call it (your domain).
When social media came out and for the next many years, people have treated it like a main course. Ultimately, it's more like a condiment, or a texture. It's time to move it to the "fabric" mindset. I was talking with Jacq about our upcoming talk at State of Now about how one starts a health reboot.
I decided to challenge myself and really put Office365 to the test. The following is sponsored by Cloud Powered Work, which is a project with IDG, LinkedIn, and Microsoft's Office365. Everything in this post is mine, and my opinions are my own.
That picture to the right is one of my "before" pictures. I took it about a year ago last March, and when I looked at it shortly after I snapped it, I thought, "Huh. That's weird. I'm a lot fatter than I think I am."
I've been in a bit of a fog the last week or so. Nothing worth talking about, really. Depression stuff. But then it lifted. What's interesting to me is how I found my footing and how I got back on track, and so there are two items I want to share with you from this: the actual learning, and more importantly, the realization of what got me there.
I sat at the counter at my local restaurant the other day and waited for over 7 minutes without anyone bothering to acknowledge that I was there. And then I walked out. And so did my money. For good.
Why should you bother using tools like Vine and Instagram, and the like? That question was asked to me by Pam Vitaz, and she asked it somewhat in this context (my words not hers): Vine's interesting, but you basically just shot a funny video. Why do that?
Fear is at the heart of most of our worst choices. I read this facebook post by James Altucher and it really punched me in the stomach. But that's just one punch in a series, because every time I question how I ended up somewhere, the real answer (underneath all the bull answers) is fear.
Can you be productive while on the road? I say yes. In fact, I'm writing this from a hotel room before heading off to a meeting with a client. The following is sponsored by Cloud Powered Work, which is a project with IDG, LinkedIn, and Microsoft's Office365.
I've just come to discover something and wanted to share it. My son, Harold, has never cared about a toy in his life. For maybe the first few minutes, it's interesting, and then, it floats away to the discard pile. The same is true of most of the video games he plays.
It took a long time to realize that I should invest in myself, that I should put my own mask on first, etc. Too long. To that end, I wanted to share some thoughts with you. When I was in my 20s, I flirted with college over and over again.
YES THIS WILL BE RECORDED: SIGN UP TO RECEIVE A COPY You've heard that using social networks like Twitter and Facebook will improve your sales, but that's not working quite the way you expected. Someone else told you to blog. Another mentioned YouTube. And what about good old fashioned email?
