marketing value Archives - Page 4 of 6 by Mark Murnahan

Marketing at 20 Percent Brilliance and 80 Percent Trial

Wouldn’t it be great if all of your marketing efforts worked just exactly as planned? Just imagine how great it would be if every piece of marketing material that you put on the Internet or elsewhere was a smash hit. That would be amazing! You could cut your expenses, earn squillions of dollars, enjoy more leisure, and retire early.

Now rub your eyes, grab another cup of coffee, stop daydreaming, and get to work. This is the real world, and we welcome you to come back and join us.

Nobody is brilliant 100 percent of the time. Some people come closer than others, but none of us walk on moonbeams while tending to our herd of unicorns. It is just not going to happen, but that should not discourage you from trying.

What is more important than creating 100 percent brilliance is to keep trying and testing new things. Even the least glamorous of your marketing efforts can have some level of success. This is more important to remember on the Internet than any other place. If you are holding back your efforts because it doesn’t peg your spectacular-ometer, you will miss out on a lot of what makes your brand what it is. Like any brand, your brand is made up of people … people and their opinions. These people are not all the same, and even some of your bottom percentile marketing efforts will be appealing to some of them.

Marketing with Juran’s Pareto Principle

A historic man named Joseph Juran observed that approximately 80 percent of effects come from 20 percent of causes. Many people know this as the 80 / 20 rule, and if you consider it carefully, you will likely find it to be both fascinating and virtually unbreakable. If you are unfamiliar, I strongly urge you to read the astonishing findings of Juran and the economist he named his studies for, Vilfredo Pareto. You may read more about The Pareto Principle and related Pareto Distribution at Wikipedia. Note that The Pareto Principle is not guesswork. It is a diligently researched, mathematically defined, widely documented, and well accepted socioeconomic principle.

Some ways the Pareto principle of 80 / 20 may be observed in your Internet marketing are as follows:

20 percent of your website pages receive 80 percent of web traffic.
20 percent of your marketing receives 80 percent of social media sharing.
20 percent of your blog articles receive 80 percent of reader comments.
20 percent of your marketing efforts can be tracked to 80 percent of your sales.

There are many other examples in which you will likely discover this principle to hold true, but I just want you to consider it and how you may apply it to your marketing efforts. Applying The Pareto Principle to your marketing may surprise you.

It is important to remember that if you reduce the 80 percent, you will also proportionally reduce the successful 20 percent. Do not neglect or devalue your 80 percentile efforts, because it has a purpose, too. Consider this: Have you ever received a compliment for something that you didn’t consider your best effort? I have, and sometimes for things that were not very popular or amazing to the masses, but were just right for somebody. I offer you this example that started with a home video of a little girl named Madeline from a few years back. I saw a message in it, so I put it on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. It did not have amazing results, but a few people thought it was cute. Those few people were worth it, and the video brought me just a bit closer to my next great 20 percentile effort. Plus, it is another tiny piece of branding that makes up the whole mix. Is it brilliant? Perhaps it is not brilliant, but do I think is it valuable? Yes, without a doubt.

Do Not Neglect Your 80 Percent Marketing

It is certain that you cannot achieve 100 percent brilliance, but even that 80 percent that is just “pretty good” may be what somebody was looking for. If you keep it to yourself, you will miss many opportunities for exposing your work to that smaller percentile of people who will think it is brilliant.

Nothing is an out of the box success. Any product or service offering will require a lot of effort to become successful. If you look at the 80 percent of less-than-brilliant efforts as simply wasted, it will not mean that the 20 percent left is all perfect. It will just mean that you still have only 20 percent of that 20 percent that is the most effective, but there will still be 80 percent that is less effective.

When you consider your marketing, remember that it cannot all be your best. There will always be a portion of your marketing which is more successful than the rest. If you try to reduce it down to just the things which are “perfect”, you will reduce your reach of a message that will work just great for some people.

So where does this article rank among my marketing efforts? I do not expect it to be a top 20 percentile piece of work. That does not matter to me as much as the fact that I am still trying, and getting even closer to my next 20-percenter all the time.

Remember This: Marketing talent requires practice.

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Is Your Blog Sending Mixed Messages?

Have you been here before? I do not just mean here at my blog, but have you been faced with questions or doubts about your efforts? Maybe you question whether people understand the intent and purpose of your blog, or maybe you question the intent and purpose of the blogs you read. These are legitimate considerations for a lot of bloggers, whether producers or readers.

I am a big proponent of blogging. In fact, if you just google “reasons to blog”, you can see that I am practically a poster child for the benefits of blogging. If you need encouragement, I suggest giving my list of “10 Really Good Reasons to Blog” a thorough read. If you need blogging tools, I would recommend “6 Essential Blogging Tools for Bloggers and Non-Bloggers“.

Let’s face it, great blogging is hard work. I have actually considered making a video of my steps to produce a blog article, but then I want to break my own fingers just to avoid the temptation of all the video editing on top of the other efforts.

What does it take to produce a blog article? Here is a one-sentence rundown for you: I get a bright idea, then I research, write, print, proofread, edit, print, give it to an editor, edit again, find a graphic, edit the graphic, categorize it, tag it, keyword it, write a description, produce an excerpt, record a podcast, upload podcast, title and tag the podcast, review the podcast, preview the article, edit it, preview it again, publish it, tweet it, facebook it, linkedin it, stumble it, reddit it, ping it, diigo it, mixx it, delicious it, then watch my web stats and keep my fingers crossed while hoping that some people will digg it, stumble it, facebook it, tweet it, and etecetera.

Somewhere in blogging, there must be an earthly reward. This is not the extent of what it takes to produce and promote a good article, by any means, but I was running out of breath trying to fit it into just one huge run-on sentence. There is a whole lot more to it than just that one breath. Through all of this effort, I hope that readers will appreciate it just a fraction of how sincerely I was trying to benefit them. If I benefit them enough with useful topics, they may help pass my blog along to somebody interested and in need of my marketing services, so that I can keep blogging without my kids getting too skinny.

Ahh, true passion of the SEO and social media marketing blog producer … you want some of that, don’t you?

Fun and Simplicity of Blogging

I already pointed out that I am an advocate of blogging. It it true that blogging holds many great rewards, but blogging is not an easy task for most of us. Some people will promote how fun and simple it is to produce a blog, but then I once heard a woman say something similar about having a baby, too. Yes, blogging can be very worthwhile, but there is also a pregnancy and labor side of blogging. Good blogs come from things like pixie dust and unicorns, but great blogs come from mind-numbing levels of creative effort. This is especially true if they are business blogs, which require a high level of marketing talent.

Knowing that it requires a lot of work to produce a useful blog, it would be a horrible shame to create and promote all that great work and not at least receive a few comments from readers, more subscribers, additional business, or something to justify all the effort and keep you wanting to continue giving your works to this amazing Internet resource we all build together.

Why Do I Make So Much Effort to Blog

Yes, here comes the reason I work hard to serve you. I will break it down really simple to tell you why I work hard to provide benefit to my readers. It is not as despicable as you may have thought.

If you are a subscriber to my blog, you have seen my crafty works to help get your thoughts racing about SEO and social media marketing. You may wonder why I work so hard to help people with marketing tips and ideas. I do not sell advertising here on my blog, so how can this possibly be worthwhile to me? I do not even promote my own company. Actually, the opposite is true, and my company promotes my blog.

What the following description of my efforts should drive home for you is the very most essential piece of the combined art and science of online marketing. Here it is: The most important thing about my blog is to serve people with something useful and compelling. The short version that I often tell people is “be useful!”

Yes, there you have it. The emphasis of my effort is to be useful and compelling. The kicker is this: When I am useful and compelling, people will share my work with others. If they share it on their blogs and social networks, my search engine ranking is improved, my readership is improved, and far beyond any big ego boost you may suspect, I actually stand a greater chance of having a paying customer ask me to help to do the same for them. Now that does not sound so much like the kitten-killer you may have made me out to be, does it? I did not even con you into buying something you do not need. That is refreshing in this day and age, don’t you think?

Have I Helped You?

I want to ask that in consideration for my efforts for you to pass along my work. If you are a do-it-yourself’er, please pass this along to people who may hire out my marketing services. If you are a marketing person and you do not have a conflict of interest, please spread this to others in our field. If you are a marketer seeking a client, just like me, I want to ask you to reach out to me so we can share ideas. Maybe I can guest blog for you and help promote you to your best audience.

In any case, if you find it useful, I want to ask you to subscribe to my blog and share your comments with others here. Also, please do not be too ashamed to pass along what I offer to others on your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, or other social networks. I am not your embarrassing Cousin Eddie. Helping me to share my work with people who can benefit is nothing to be ashamed of. I may be just “a web guy” to you, but I may provide a lot of benefit to somebody you know.

I promise that, although I am from Kansas, I will not behave like the famous Cousin Eddie from Kansas depicted in this video.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

New vs. Returning Users: How Readership Churn Counts in The Static Age

The Internet has changed. Wait, scratch that … the world has changed, and the people of the world are fully engrossed in “The Information Age”. Maybe it is even beyond that, and perhaps we can now effectively call this “The Static Age” because of the massive level of static we must sort through to hear or be heard. Right now, today, there are likely 42 squillion people writing about your industry on a daily basis, and unless you are the reincarnation of Elvis Presley, you will have a hard time capturing their interest.

It is time to take a closer look at an important metric of your website traffic. Who is coming to visit, and will they return? Did you do something that knocked their socks off? Did you have something to say that totally blew them away enough to subscribe and come back? Allow me to explain why this matters, and what you can do about it.

Good Bloggers Know and Care About Readership Churn

The number of bloggers in 2010 has shot the moon. If you don’t believe me, that is fine. I should not need to prove this with numbers, because you surely already know it. You probably already saw another blog (or three) in the last 1 minute and 22 seconds. The blast of information is fast, furious, and growing like a flu pandemic. Some of it is great information, but most of it will interest you as much as a knitting class interests a race car driver.

Much of the massive blast of information simply does not apply to your life. Even if it is reliably useful information, I think we can agree that a lot of what we see on the Internet is filed away in the “time wasted” category and we will not be going back to read more.

So what about you? Will you find yourself filed away in the bottom of your readers’ Internet history? If you want to avoid this, you must get a couple things straight right now. In my short list, I will include that you must be useful, pay attention to your readers, give them a great reason to come back, and do not disappoint them when and if they do.

There is Still Hope for Bloggers!

I have written about good reasons to blog. The reasons I have listed have been implemented and trusted by many readers. I write things to help people, and I do not take them for granted. Even with all my efforts to be useful, it would be astonishingly simple for people to forget where they got that useful idea (whatever the idea). I know this, because I forgot where I have found some great ideas, too. I am telling you … there is a massive wave of information, and even the best of us cannot keep it all filed away perfectly. So it is extremely important to help people remember you. If you are in business, it is important to help people remember why to come back to you when they want more, or they know somebody who does. How can you do that?

If you are blogging to advertise your goods or services, you will have a hard time getting people to pay attention. Something far more important is to give them something they care about. Give them something useful. Since you cannot do something amazing every day (nobody can), you should give them a picture of other things you write about. Give them an archive. If they think that you may be just a little bit interesting, let them see if there is more where that came from. I will blog about how to create various kinds of blog archives soon, but for now, just be aware of the idea and that it can help others see more value in what you provide.

If They Want More, Make it Easy and Non-Threatening

The next thing to do is be sure that if people see a value in what you provide that they can subscribe to receive more of it. You do not have to beat them over the head with it, but you cannot expect them to go out of their way to give you their attention, either. It is not a promise that you will be amazing. It is not a promise that they will ever do business with you, either. It simply means that they will have more opportunity to see what you are about, and if they eventually need what you offer or know somebody who does, they will remember you. Timing is a big issue in business, and most of the time, people do not need or want what you sell at the moment they discover you. Things can change, and if they are at least aware of you, you will have a lot stronger chance of getting the call when they need you.

Give them an easy way to subscribe. Google’s FeedBurner is easy and non-threatening because people will never need to worry about you spamming them. If they subscribe by email, it is safe because they are not giving it to you. I never worry about subscribing to a FeedBurner feed, because I know my email is not going anywhere but Google, and Google already has my email. They don’t spam me. As for RSS subscribers, like email, they choose whether to subscribe and they will not need to worry about you having their email address, and the only way you can really “spam” them is by putting it on your blog for the world to see.

It is this easy to ask somebody to subscribe. Allow me to lead by example.

Please Subscribe by Email or RSS

or Subscribe in a reader.

… and it is this easy to show them your past performance so they know what to expect:

See My Blog Archive

To summarize this, it is important to remember the value of repetition in marketing, and that if you want people to receive your message over and over again, you need to do something useful that benefits them. You have to give them a great reason to receive your repetition. Then, you must let them know that you want to be in their list of considerations when it is the right time for them.

No, this is not a precise tutorial on how to get things just right. It is a message on how to think about your marketplace and why people will want to hear from you again. Just like any business endeavor, when you reach the same people again and again, it is a whole lot easier than trying to continually find new people. This is true whether you are giving something away for free, or offering something for sale.

Now I ask that if you have an interest in what I said here that you subscribe to receive more, because I truly do not want to have to replace you.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

99 Percent of Marketing Fails, But Eleanor Can Fly!

I have heard percentages of marketing efforts that do not work. I have witnessed those statistics enough to reach the top of my throat, and to declare that most marketing is little more than miserable failure, like the last squeak of a mouse in a trap. In fact, if you held my job for a day or two, you could even taste it like bad acid reflux. It is really true though, that most marketing falls on deaf ears, and the masses are immune to it. This is largely because these days, anybody with a computer and an Internet connection can bill themselves as an expert marketer. The barrier of entry no longer requires aptitude, experience, or even desire for anything other than somebody else’s money.

The odds of a marketer to recognize the root of our field as helping others with respect, dignity, and a desire to serve them has diminished to a point that skepticism is allowed to take over as a prevalent factor. This means that trust … hard-earned and well-deserved trust is due for a resurgence. A recall to the very root of the word “sell” is what it takes to be really great in a marketplace. If you have not learned this from your marketing pedigree just yet, the word “sell”, in this context, owes its origin to the Norwegian word “selje”. The literal translation is “to serve”, and that still means a lot to some of us.

The job of a professional marketer is to figure out that tiny fraction which does work. What we do is to serve our clients in a way which reflects our desire to benefit more than only ourselves, and to serve others at our highest capabilities. It means that a great marketer must look beyond the benefit of a few bucks today and understand the greater benefit of tomorrow.

A Happy Marketing Success Story

As the economy spooks many companies into bankruptcy and executive fears of failed marketing reach the brim of my digestive system and invoke my gag reflex, I want to tell you a success story. Yes, amongst all of the corporate scaremongering and enterprise torment, there really is success in the mix. This story is a real one, and if it is what I believe it is, it exemplifies success in the hardest market ever, which is to find personal and professional satisfaction.

Join with me and jump on board with my excitement for a moment. Raise your hands and start cheering while I share an exciting story of enterprise SEO success.

There is a company, a tried and true success in their marketplace, who picked up the mouse and found me. They searched for what I do, they took time to read a small share of my facts, figures, and persona, and we met by voice over the telephone. The story has more detail, which I will share as it unfolds, but for the moment, I offer you a piece of my expectedly upfront social media transparency.

The caller on the other end of the phone was a bright and cheery executive who revamped much of the delight that I have held so dearly as my ideal marketplace. This was not an intern at the local veterinary clinic asking how they could get a few more sick dogs to treat. It was not even an auto dealer seeking answers to social media marketing. It was a fellow gearhead executive calling on behalf of a gearhead company. He spoke my language, and we held discussions of real marketing beyond just the couple clicks up the roller coaster track that most companies will attempt before they take the chicken exit and get off the ride while the cars roll back into the loading area.

This guy was speaking my kind of language. You know, the language of waking up and smelling gear oil, coffee, and yesterday’s sweat. The kind of stuff that would intimidate Clint Eastwood and force Chuck Norris to turn in his “Man Card” and scream “Uncle” like a crybaby-sissy-bed-wetter. Yes, it was as if the Chairman of Manhood and the CEO of Testosterone were in stereo driving an epic bass line directly into my entrepreneurial earphones.

When I tell you this guy is right up my alley, I only claim that because I actually pictured him taking down six Chicago street thugs with nothing but a toothpick and a rubber band … yep, in an alley … my alley. Indeed, this dude instilled just enough of a masculine man-crush that when I told the story to my wife, she actually recounted it, in jest, with a boy-meets-girl kind of scenario and somebody was about to lean in for the first kiss. She didn’t get to the part where they sweat on each other, but probably just because that made her a bit weak in the knees. The fog of testosterone floating around would be enough to stop most hearts dead in their tracks.

In our encounter, it was as if I was driving Eleanor from the movie “Gone in 60 Seconds” and … well, like we were both driving Eleanor (e.g. Barrett-Jackson Auto Auction LOT: 1287). All but one detail, he actually has yet come to liberate my Eleanor-plus sized budget from the company’s board of directors. He will be working on them this week, and I will assist him in that jailbreak all I can. It will be important that my new gearhead friends understand that there is a vast difference between Lot 1287 and the dozens of other nice 1967 Mustangs in the list, and the difference is not all about the price … it is value which matters.

While we visited, I discovered the most awkward scenario. The company has me pictured as an in-house corporate SEO guy. At first, I felt a little tear on my cheek, because I know there are only a relatively few companies who understand the value that a C-level position in my industry can provide for them, or how much a long-standing CEO requires just to keep feeding his family. Then I started remembering how much I hate selling SEO. I mean, after all, you can Google something as simple as “sell SEO” or “how to sell SEO” and find that I know a lot about this business. My best scenario of how to sell SEO is just to be able to do it, prove it, and earn a squillion dollars from it. I already did that. My selling is over, and what I mostly want is to do the work I love, and to never have to slink my way out of a boardroom because some kid with less talent but a better line of garbage talked them into some cheap SEO. Realistically, any boardroom worth the table where they sit should be able to distinguish real marketing talent from a marketing representative waiting for his next diaper change. If they cannot recognize that difference, maybe a quick Google for “marketing talent” will flip the butter and the bread in the right direction and show them where the real deal lives and thrives. Where that butter meets the bread is with the guy holding uncanny skills (marketing and gearhead alike), a history of success, and a knack for telling what people need to hear even if it is not what they want to hear. That is a guy with the company in mind, whether he is working as their independent SEO consultant or as their boardroom fun department ready to whip out his clown nose and reveal his magic bag filled with market share, acquisition targets, increased leverage, stronger investors, retail fanaticism, and other boardroom delights.

In either scenario which my gear-hugging pals over there prefer, my Eleanor+ (performance bonus, equity, and etcetera) price point is a cheap jailbreak to fire up the passion of a real gearhead marketer who can come to the office and bang out high-compression gasoline flavored treats the way I would passionately provide for these guys.

 I doubt they can afford me, but I am just as sure as motor oil and gasoline going to give them every opportunity to try. It really comes down to how their board of directors view the value of the Internet and my impact upon it.

To my new gearhead pals, I have a tip for your use in our synergistic battle in the boardroom. If they want to know how to justify SEO cost, just Google it! They will find the same guy as when you were seeking how to find SEO talent. 😉

NOTE: To my many longstanding and devoted clients, many of which have been with my services for a decade, please be aware that nothing will shake my devotion to you. You will continue to receive the highest attention from my highly capable support representatives, and you can expect the same level of service which you have trusted me with for so long. As you are surely aware, there is no dollar amount which can purchase my integrity.

Do You Know What You Are Worth? Your Critics Seem to Know!

Do you ever impress yourself? Maybe you should!

A question came up today while I was talking with my wife as she created a masterpiece before my eyes. I asked her “do you ever impress yourself?” The natural answer that most people will give is “No, that sounds too arrogant.” She was not too off the mark from the popular answer, but based on her level of mastery, it puzzled me. It made me think deeper about a conversation that has taken place between myself and many clients in their boardrooms.

I want to explain that my wife is indeed a master at the work she does. She has many years of experience as an artist, and she deserves all of the kudos she receives for her work. In the instance of my question to her today, it involved her work in our cakes and confections business. She was creating flowers from scratch. She took sugar and turned it into flowers. I do not mean flowers like the average iron worker or Internet geek would make from sugar. She was creating lifelike flowers with petals, pistols, stamen, sepal, and other parts that many of us do not even realize flowers have. They are really delicate … like a flower.

I had to ponder why she would ever feel like she was not doing something spectacular. I mean, how many people do you know who can make a flower petal from sugar? Can they put it together with a whole bunch of other sugar petals and all of those other hard to pronounce flower parts and make them look like a real flower, and then sell them to people for the cake served on their wedding day?

This got me to thinking about the many times I have witnessed clients from my standpoint in my field of marketing who just don’t have a good handle on their value proposition. Their fear is often not so unlike Peggy’s concerns that she would seem arrogant, cocky, conceited, too confident, or whatever strangely negative twist you can put on doing something amazing that other people can see so clearly.

I think a lot of people have felt a bit kneecapped by the fine line between confidence and the point where it is distasteful to others. In the case of Peggy, just like so many others, they draw back so far from that line that modesty comes to take away their hopes and dreams. Modesty, when taken too far, can be devastating in a marketing campaign. I see it all the time that out of some deep-seated sense of modesty, a company culture will make it seem nearly impossible to reflect the true quality of their product.

In the course of this lengthy inner conversation, I had to confront myself. I am a race car driver, and in racing, I have always felt a bit shy with the flattering things people say when I come off the track. I know that other drivers are trying very hard to drive fast, and I want them to feel great about themselves. I don’t want to be the jerk to take away their glory, so I kind of hunker away and forget how well I drive.

YourNew.com Racing Corvette Z06: Driver Mark Aaron Murnahan

Confidence Perceived and Confidence Worth Stealing

I am a wickedly badass search engine optimizer and marketer … I can let that fly freely here on my marketing blog. I can whip the best of them, and I can quantify it in real numbers. Yes, I can back it up! What is profound to me is how the things where we seek the greatest gain in life is where we feel the most doubt. I love my work as a search engine optimizer and marketing consultant, so don’t get me wrong. I have done it for many years, and earned a handsome living following that passion. However, in my inner thoughts, I still feel that my big accomplishment will come from racing cars. I feel a confidence by driving fast, just as much as I do in the business which makes me money. In fact, before I lost millions of dollars in contracts during 2009 (and most of my ass with them), I was planning to retire next year and create a racing school to follow my passion.

How Money Changes Perception

It seems confusing and downright wrong how business endeavors make people more self-conscious than something perceived as a hobby. Noting that I am considering driving as my ultimate business endeavor, it really only makes sense when you examine how our modern society will criticize you more by things they perceive will matter to you or benefit you. What I mean is that I can tell you I am a badass race car driver and you do not feel threatened, because I am not trying to sell you a ticket to my next race or recruit you to my racing school. Racing does not pay me at this point. It actually has a cost to me of about $250,000 per race season, and a scheduled squillion-bazillion dollars to open a race school if I am done with this wicked-badass marketing gig before I am 300 years old.

You have no perception of loss just because I am fast, and I can even tell you I am fast. I am not a bad guy for being fast. Now if I told you that I am a badass at something which pays me money and feeds my family, you will be far more likely to take me to the ropes and beat me until I beg for mercy. How screwy does that sound, really?

Passion + Profit = Critics

This has all forced me to question how the things we feel the most passionate about are the easiest things to become modest about, and it is magnified if we actually receive a perceived benefit. I love racing. If I had to put this in terms for the average race fan without showing my modesty, I am one of the fastest men around a track you will ever meet in your lifetime. I have driven at speeds you will never comprehend and pulled off split-second saves, just inches from disaster that would have killed 99.9999 percent of people behind that wheel when the brakes got weak at 170 miles per hour. Now, if I tell you I have done the same thing and it helped me to buy a bag of groceries to feed my kids, it is strangely easier to criticize. OK, leaving the groceries and the kids out, if I said it makes me money, I am just a bit more of a bad guy. Don’t deny it … you see what a bastard I am if I charge money for my talents compared to doing something equally as passionate, but doing it for free.

Now then, why should Peggy feel awkward to express confidence about work done exceptionally well? Why is it easier for you to accept confidence about her work when the message comes from me rather than from her? Why is it even more exciting and acceptable to enjoy her mastery if you are far outside of her market area and you know she cannot sell you a cake? By the way, cakes are very hard to ship!

Why should I be so modest about the fact that I can own, manage, and drive for a race team that can take a track record on the first visit to a track? Why should I be so modest about the fact that I wrote three really good books in just three months during 2009? One of them (“Living in the Storm“) was written as my ass was falling off in business, but I completed it because I sincerely believed it would benefit others. Why should I be modest about the fact that more people read my work each month than reside in the city of Topeka, Kansas, where I live? Why should I be modest about the fact that I can rank my clients at the top of search engines for things which 99.9999 percent of the world’s competitors cannot achieve?

Well, I suppose that our reasons are not so unlike yours. Sometimes we just have to accept the talents we have developed and stop downgrading ourselves with the fear of the few jealous antagonists who will call us wrong for it while our fans are still waving our checkered flag and reveling in our winning the race.

I asked a few questions here, but what I really want to know is what you propose to do to stop acting like a Mark or Peggy? Maybe I can help. If this is the case, I will admire you for being uncommonly able to see beyond the perception of somebody having to lose just because somebody else gains.

If you like what I have to say here, please share it with others, regardless of whether I gain or do not gain. Your sharing of this line of thought with others may make a difference in not only the bag of groceries I bring home for my kids, but perhaps it could really help somebody else to gain a better view of their marketplace as well. Besides, if it helps you feel better, the vast majority of people it can help cannot afford to hire my services … marketing, racing, or shipping a four tier wedding cake. Oh, and I did not even mention the cost to have me write a book, but if I mentioned buying one for ten bucks, it would be even easier to see me as a bad guy. You see, that sounds kind of silly to not recognize your own contributions, right?

Corvette Z06 Photo Courtesy Pixx By Tango Photography