This is one of my most requested presentations, and though the audio quality isn’t perfect on this, it’s a good sample what I can do in a webinar. It’s especially cool that my friends at ThoughtRock exported this and create a video that I can share with you.

I hope you enjoy the video.

Recession Proof Your Life: Make a PLAN and Make It Great! from Thought Rock on Vimeo.

Driven to bring results to your business, Phil has developed an enlightening and stimulating PLAN for business people and entrepreneurs looking to watch their dreams take off. This distinctive method of pushing beyond your barriers has helped countless people live their lives with passion and focus. Phil has a charming and delightful personality, which brings warmth and personal interaction with his audience. When Phil speaks with your organization, you will feel as though he was chatting with you one-on-one. Phil’s action PLAN includes…

Key Learnings:

Purpose – Define your dreams and go after them whole-heartedly. Phil gives you the tools to hone in on the life you have always wanted, but were too afraid to go after.

Learning – Once you have established your purpose in life, you can then find out all of the necessary information to go after it! Phil encourages you to expand your mind and your network, as you seek out the right path for your life.

Attitude- Your attitude will determine the amount of your success, and the quality of your life. Phil explains how a winning attitude will always come out on top.

Network – Along the adventures life gives you, you will meet lots of people along the way. Phil teaches you how to engage these people, and build quality relationships that will bring you closer to your dreams faster than you ever imagined.

One of my favorite movies of all time is The Bucket List starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. The gist, if you haven’t seen it, is figuring out exactly what you want to do before you die.

At least that’s the gist most people actually do.

Making your bucket list.

But really, who cares if you just make a list? That’s not inspiring, and that doesn’t do anything for your life. What does something for your life is simple: Do something!
Watch the video

Now think about your bucket list. What do you want to do, what do you want to be known for, before you die?

What are you waiting for?

Go do 1 thing right now. Pick 1 thing, and schedule it NOW!

Book that trip.

Volunteer.

Start your business.

Write your book.

Do something NOW!

Make your Bucket List – Then do 1 thing.

Then the next.

Then the next.

Oh yes you can!

Bad news: The best time to do whatever you’re thinking about doing was yesterday.

Good news: The next best time is right now!

Of course, there are so many excuses why you can’t do something.

You might have…

No training
No time
No energy
No resources

But there are so many reasons to stop waiting, and start doing:

Are you:

Doing it for a friend
For your spouse/significant other
For YOU!!!

Because YOU’RE worth it!

What’s your excuse?

Go ahead…get all your excuses out of your system.

Then…

Shut up!

Do it anyway!

For me.
For your family.
For your customers.
For YOU!
Because YOU’RE worth it!

STOP MAKING EXCUSES!

Just do it now.

You know where you’re headed.
Get started.

NOW!!

Stop Waiting. Start Doing.

Right NOW!

As of 8 AM on April 19th, 2011, I am officially part of the team at Turning Minds, and I will serve as the Marketing Technology Strategist, doing many of the same things I’ve done on my own for much of the past 6 years.

Don’t worry, I’m not giving up my dream of being an entrepreneur. I’ve simply decided I can help my clients achieve more by working with a small nimble team, and there are TONS of reasons I’m excited to work with the team at Turning Minds.

Here are a mere 5 reasons I’m excited to be joining Turning Minds

1) Working with a team – One of the things I enjoyed about corporate America was working on a team of like-minded individuals. I worked by myself for much of the last 11 months since I left corporate America full-time, and there were times I got lonely. That led me to being less productive than I could be, and it wasn’t good for my clients, or for me.

2) Faster service for clients – I’m still going to do as many speaking engagements as I can, as that’s how I meet new potential clients and how I can share my best case studies about how social media really works. But while I’m doing that, I often can’t serve my clients needs as well as I’d like to. Having a great team who share my client-first attitude with me will allow me to comfortably have someone else serve clients while I’m working on other things.

3) Ability to Focus on What I’m Good At – As a solo-preneur, I’ve had to do every piece of client work by myself, or at least manage the partners I’ve worked with to ensure things are done with the same care I would give my clients. I’m sure I did some micromanaging, and probably some none managing, of my outsourced partners. Now that I’m part of a team, I can invest the time on the front end to explain the project and let each person on the team do what they do best, and get out of the way for things I don’t do well at all.

4) Constant collaboration – I’ve already this in action and I’m excited to see more of it. Things that I’ve done on my own I’ve shared with some of the folks at Turning Minds and I am impressed with the results. I love that I can now pick up the phone or send an e-mail and get feedback on what I’m working on and not have to worry about compromising client secrets.

5) Accountability for Results – Part of working with other people that I enjoy is the accountability I put on myself when other people are counting on me to produce. I haven’t written as much as I’d like lately, and now that I have a team counting on me, you’ll see more writing and more ideas from me. We’re finalizing our editorial calendar and will be bringing some great topics to light that can help you grow your small business faster.

One change you’ll see that may require a change from you, my dear readers, is my writings on social media and small business will be shared at Turning Minds. I’ll still be writing articles here about networking and public speaking and other random thoughts.

Go check out Turning Minds and sign up for the RSS feed and the newsletter. We’re going to share some great stuff there and I’m confident it will help your business grow.

Questions/comments/concerns? Let me know in the comments.

Been thinking a lot about direction for this blog, and for my company. Thought I’d better ask the people who read my work what they want to read more about, instead of just thinking about things myself.

If you have 15 seconds, take my poll and let me know what you think. Your help will not go unnoticed and will be VERY appreciated by yours truly. I’ll leave the poll open until February 15th, 2011 just in case you want to think about it and then come back and answer. You may select more than 1 answer.

Thank you in advance. You may need to click in to my website to get the poll.

POLL STARTS BELOW

I saw this card recently and thought it was just what you needed to PLAY FULL OUT today!

I love little reminders like this.

What little reminders have popped into your life lately? Are you paying attention or rushing past them? Share yours in the comments. Might be just what someone else needs to.

The below video is 15 minutes long. It’s worth every second. There’s gold throughout.

Thanks to Scott Stratten for being bold enough to stop and for sharing your message. It’s a great reminder for me right now to stop looking at what’s next and to focus on the right now…and ENJOY it!

Stop right now…invest 15 minutes, and watch the video!

Sometimes I fall down. Like a few weeks ago. I fell down, and I hurt my back. It still hurts.

A LOT!

Life must go on however. There are still things I must do.

Pushing through the pain is one of them.

Yes, I’ve been to see someone. Nothing is broken.

Yes, it’ll heal with time.

Most things do.

But I had to make the conscious decision to get back up, get back on the bull, and go out into the world every day.

I get to choose whether I get up or not.

And so do you.

Yep, some days are easier than others to choose to get up.

And yet still, it’s worth it. It’s worth getting up each day, because of  the new possibilities, of the new hope that the next day might be the best day.

Because if you don’t look back, usually the very next day IS the very best day, of the rest of your life.

I hope you’ll choose to get back on the bull.

Today.

Tomorrow.

Every day.

Even when it hurts a little.

PS: If you can’t see the video, click here. It’s only 1:14.

And no, this is NOT how I hurt my back

Today is my last official day as an associate in corporate America. I spent almost 9 years as a vice president of information technology at a financial services company, leading the IT Help Desk for 10 direct reports in support of 2500 associates and however many clients we have using our online products. While I was never the most technical guy, I was the person who made sure our customers were happy. Every day I was at work, I gave things 100% of what I had, no matter what else was going on in my life. I’m going in today, my last day, to take care of business…again.

My job was simple: To help our IT organization increase employee & customer engagement. To be unafraid to screw their computer up, because they knew our IT department could fix just about anything they did to their computer. I got to encourage folks to stop being afraid of technology, and to realize that it wasn’t really about the tools. Instead, I helped them understand it was all about the conversations they had with their clients, with their co-workers, with those they serve, and that what really mattered was the connections you created and cultivated.

I (along with everyone else I worked with) helped drive our bottom line to be a larger (geographically, profits, and overall revenue) company from when I started on November 19th, 2001 until today, May 28th, 2010. We’ve expanded into lots of new markets, and we’ve been recognized the last 7 years by Fortune magazine as one of the top 100 places to work.

So it is with great sadness I say goodbye.

Goodbye corporate America!

Goodbye to the same paycheck every 2 weeks, no matter what happened.

Goodbye to health insurance, dental insurance, pre-tax parking, matching 401(k) contributions.

I’m not saying goodbye to my co-workers though. Most of them are not just co-workers, but friends. Friends I will miss dearly…though I expect to keep in contact with many of them.

Hello to full-time Make IT Great!

I’m doing something completely different, but exactly the same:

I’ll be helping IT organizations increase employee & customer engagement. Help them show their customers it’s really not about the tools; instead it’s all about the conversations you participate in and the connections you create and cultivate. Teach them to leverage the technology instead of just using it.

Only now, instead of focusing on making just 1 organization great, I can increase my scope and help many organizations see the value of making smart technology investments.

Hello to no guaranteed income.

Hello to finding my own insurance plan, parking in my driveway, setting up my own individualized savings plans.

Hello to a whole new world of possibilities.

It is with GREAT joy and awareness and discovery and anticipation that I move forward into this new world, full-time, starting Tuesday June 1st.

There’s a lot of anxiety, to get it started, and to move forward.

I’m a little nervous about the change. Only a little though.

Maybe that will change as time goes by, but for now, I’m only a little concerned.

Thanks for coming with me this far on the journey. I hope you’ll come back, and join me as this next chapter of my life gets written.

Goodbye – Hello.

The best is yet to come.

I just got back from a fantastic weekend at Business School for Bloggers and other social media  types in Chicago, Illinois. While the keynotes were dynamite, the panel discussions lively, and the mastermind groups extremely helpful, I’m not writing about any of those today. I’m writing instead of what happened Saturday night at the Blue Frog in downtown Chicago.

I’m writing about Karaoke!

For those unfamiliar with karaoke, it’s where someone gets up to sing the words to a song by a famous artist. It’s popular in lots of places, and I learned Saturday it is WAY popular in social media circles. Now I know why.

What follows are the lessons I learned Saturday, and the way I’ll be applying them to my business. If you use them, they’ll help you too!

Get your friends involved for more fun, and more importantly, more success. Watch the quick video below. It’s only 31 seconds, and it’s worth it.

If you look closely, you’ll see me with 4 other people. Could I have sung this awesome Backstreet Boys tune alone. Absolutely! Was it more fun and a WAY better experience doing it with 4 friends? No doubt about it.

Social media lesson: Align yourself with great people who can pick you up when you need help, or even when you don’t. It’s more fun to work together than alone, so find a friend or 4 who can be there when you need it.

Let the audience participate –

Lesson: Don’t act like a know it all. Leave room for others to comment, to retweet, to ask questions, and to give back. It’s a far richer experience.

No booing – This is a Blue Frog special. One of their rules in karaoke is nobody gets booed. Instead, as you can tell from the clip above, everyone is signing along, clapping, even though we are badly out of tune.

Lessons: No booing is a rule on my blog too. If folks are nasty and negative about me, or nasty and  negative about others, in my comments, those comments will never see the light of day. Feel free to disagree with me in a civilized way, but name calling and booing never works!

You also will notice I don’t write about what’s wrong with customer service, with business, or with other people, or about books that don’t resonate with me. There are enough people writing that crap, I don’t need to point it out. No booing works for me!

Don’t take yourself too seriously – Watch the video below. It’s 54 seconds, and it’s me and 6 folks I met at the Blue Frog.

Lesson – If you do something embarassing, like sending out in public a tweet that was made for DM, or something accidentally annoying, like send a tweet 5 or 6 times because you think your Tweeter is broken, don’t take it too seriously. Apologize if you need to apologize, and laugh it off knowing everyone makes mistakes. It’s not fatal, and if it is fatal, it was meant to be.

Have fun! – I love karaoke with friends. I hate it alone. It’s fun to cheer on my friends when they sing their favorite songs. It’s fun to dance and be goofy and act like Beyonce, in the comfort of strangers. I found a way to have fun even though I could only sing along once. It was WAY worth it!

Lesson – This is obvious. If you’re writing about and doing stuff you love, then it’s going to flow a lot more freely than if you take yourself too seriously. Enjoy what you do, and don’t do it unless you can find some joy in it!

Your turn: Do you karaoke? What song do YOU like to sing? Or are you just cheering other people on? That’s ok too.