Ok, That's Enough.

This afternoon, on my way home from work, I officially have heard the end of the buzzword "Rockstar". Flat out, 100 percent, that word is now dead to me, and it should be to you now too, and here's why.

I listen to a lot of ESPN Radio - its good drive time listening, and heck, I drive by the place most of it is broadcast from on my way to work. I was on my way home, listening to the Scott Van Pelt show. There was a discussion on the terrible state of the head coaching position as a whole in the NFL these days - I agree, its terrible, but that's not the point of this all here.

I bring to you, the end of the word "Rockstar", as it has now been used to describe A TYPE OF FOOTBALL COACH!! Are you serious? The quote was something like "We don't need to hire another Parcells, or Gruden, one of those rockstar type football coaches"

That's it, its done. That word is officially dead. End. Of. Story. Of course, its been on life support for a while now, but the plug has been pulled, the beep is sounding, and the doctor is declaring the time of death.

Rockstar is gone. Good riddance, too. It's about time. You will not be missed...

Why My Blog Reminds Me Of Spam

I suppose that's not the greatest title for a blog post, but it's true. My blog reminds me of spam.

It doesn't seem to get to the right target, it's all over the place contentwise, and post tend to come in bunches, much like spam does.

I promise you, my loyal (I figure if you read THIS post especially, you're a loyal reader) readers, that I will be fine tuning things around here quite a bit in the coming days and weeks and so on.

The only thing that makes this blog NOT like spam, is that you all know where the posts are coming from, and I am actually a real person who's not trying to sell you anything. I don't have a product or service for sale - I just voice my opinions.

Thanks for reading.

No.

You're not good enough.

There, I said it. I'm not saying it to myself, I'm saying it to YOU. Hearing the word "no" sucks, because that's exactly what it means, in just about any situation in our marketing and advertising world...heck, in most of the world in general.

Does it make you mad that I just told you you aren't good enough? Yes? Good, now calm down and prove me wrong. No? Both good and bad; Good, because you don't take things that may be out of your control personally. Bad, because you may just not care. I'm going to assume you care for the rest of this post. You're welcome to stop reading if you don't care about hearing no, because chances are that you don't particularly want to hear what I have to say to begin with. Lets take a moment and let those people take off.

...


...


Okay, everybody that wants to be here, are you still reading? Good.

Let me start by taking what I said earlier back. You are good enough. You wouldn't be doing what you are doing if you weren't. Hearing "no" from a client you're trying to sell to, or from a client that asked you to design something, or from your boss who asked you to do a task for them is not the end of the world. Hearing "no" basically means "try again, do it better" for the most part. If you learn to not take "no" personally or learn how to harness your anger into productivity when you hear "no", you will be much better off than most.

The biggest effect that "no" can have on a person will actually extend OUT of the current project. If you only ever learn one thing from reading my blog, this is what you need to learn. A "no" on project 1 CANNOT affect project 2. You cannot let yourself be gun shy, or be hesitant to step out of the box on a separate project or idea because you were told "no" on something else. Separate projects may as well be in separate worlds, even if they are both to be presented to the same person! Someone who would hold something from one project over you during a completely separate project doesn't deserve to be in the place they are in, in the first place.

I'll admit it...sometimes a "no" can really hurt. There is not a universal cure or workaround for a "no". I wish there was, and I honestly wish someone was making a crapload of money selling that cure, because never having to even consider fearing rejection would be amazing.

Please don't attempt to avoid "no", because that will be even worse for you. Do what you have to do to be able to UNDERSTAND "no" and you're on your way to greatness, I promise.

Anyone have a good story about overcoming a "no"??

Thanks for reading...

I've Got Nothing

Sometimes it's okay to not have anything you can do. Sometimes you just need to recharge. As much as you want to try, you cannot go at top speed forever. Sometimes you need to slow down, sometimes you need to take it easy. Other than sleeping, sometimes you need time to do nothing, to have nothing.

Even the most creative, innovative, dynamic people have times when they've got nothing. It may be because they're stumped, it may be because they don't have a current project, or maybe they CHOSE to take the time to do nothing, to have nothing.

I'm not proposing something out of the ordinary here, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person to ever say "hey, maybe taking a little bit of time for yourself is a good idea." But as many people talk it up or mention it...very few of them actually practice it.

Thanks for reading...

Take Advantage Of What You Have

With so many advances coming so quickly these days, there is way too much emphasis on keeping up with EVERYTHING. The thing is, not everyone can do that. Not everyone will ever do that. Of course continuous education is very important, but you cannot forget what you learned before. You cannot forget where you came from.

You may not like where you were, but that's the foundation that where you are was built upon. Keep track of what you know, so you can take advantage of it. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, you cannot afford having more weaknesses than strengths, especially in the business world. You can't make it to the top of the mountain without climbing...just remember what got you up each successive steep face, because if you forget something, you just might fall.

Thanks for reading...

Failed Ideas In Blogging

Every new blog has bad ideas every so often...granted, so do longstanding blogs. Bad ideas are a part of everything, especially marketing and advertising.

I wanted to start doing a weekly marketing/business podcast review, most likely posting every Friday. Looking through iTunes, it is true that there are quite a few marketing style podcasts, but other than a few, I wouldn't feel comfortable doing reviews of them. I'm not going to name any names, but most of them were not even close to on topic to what the podcast claimed it was.

Of course there are podcasts from commercial entities like Business Weekly, New York Times, etc, those are pretty much going to be on topic. I realize that marketing and advertising are a tremendously broad genre, but then again, so is music, or computers, or most of what podcasts are created about. Why does the business community have to be so fragmented in regards to podcasting? There are hundreds of awesome blogs or newsletter sites about these topics, but podcasting seems to be elusive, at least from what I was able to find. I realize that iTunes is no longer the be all end all of the podcasting community, but poking around anywhere else isn't likely to get me much other information with such broad search terms.

I suppose that having a failed idea is going to happen occasionally. I've had them happen in many other parts of my life, and I'm sure you have too. The key is to pick yourself up and keep going, and maybe coming at the failed idea from another angle will one day result in success. Maybe one day there will be some podcast reviews in my blog...in fact, I'll pretty much say there WILL be at some point. In the meantime, I'll be going back to doing what many of the above podcasters were/are doing...having a forum for talking about a particular subject, and then only really half paying attention to said subject. If you can't beat em, join em, right?

Thanks for reading...