In the past year, just like you I have made hundreds if not thousands of choices. Four of my choices stand out and helped define who I am today.

The payoff has been huge. I have a clear vision of where I, my family and my business are going. I’m taking the steps everyday to stay on the path defined by my vision of happiness and success. Life is never truly easy if you are striving for success but it sure can be fun with a clear head and a clear mind! So, here’s the four choices that have gotten me where I am today.

Last June I made a choice in my life that cleared hundreds of hours a year from my schedule. The details don’t matter, almost everyone has an activity in their life that is a time drain with mostly negative consequences. For you it might be sitting around watching TV re-runs at night instead of working on what you define as personal success.  Immediately after making my choice I struggled a bit to fill the time void. Ultimately I rediscovered my love of music and reading quality business and motivational books, both of which help define me as a person.

Around August 1st I re-dedicated myself to my wife and family. Again the details don’t matter (plus it’s personal stuff and I hang myself out here enough on this blog). Relationships take work, lots and lots of hard work, if you want a great relationship. Cheryl and I no longer settle for average. Those who knew us then and know us now still don’t believe we are the same people or the same couple. When you make a choice to change, you can change, and we are living proof of that.

Last November I made the choice that this blog would be a priority in my life. Too much that I define as good in my life has come as a result of my writing. I managed to complete case studies during my lunch hour on the day due while earning my MBA. I’m good at putting my thoughts into words and I made the choice to do it more often. Little did I know in December that I would be blogging everyday and loving it.

In January I quit drinking. It’s another choice I have made that has radically changed my life. Ever since I read a post by my friend Anne I have been seriously considering this move. It has resulted in having more time to dedicate to my pursuit of success and happiness.

Are there choices you could make that would help you realize your vision of happiness and success? Have you already made those choices and are you willing to share the results with me in the comments? Jump in this could be a fun conversation.

Today I experienced first hand what if feels like to hold the currency that is the trust of another human being. Early in the day I learned that a new customer has chosen to go with my proposal based upon the recommendation of “Fred,” a customer I wrote about in my Regaining Trust post. Later in the day, one of my largest customers made a significant long-term financial commitment because he trusts that we will get the work done as we have in the past.

Last June I read Jeffery Gitomer’s Little Teal Book of Trust and began to realize that I had more than a few messes in my life which needed cleaning up. I had let down a customer who had become a friend over the years. After a month of hard work and introspection, I repaired the relationship enough to write the aforementioned post about regaining trust. This was about the same time I began developing my real, authentic and sustainable methodology for making decisions.

Slowly but surely over the past nine months I have continued following Gitomer’s advice and I have transferred the success I wrote about to all aspects of my life. As I regain the trust of those important to me, I am learning to trust others in ways I never have before. That leads me to Chris Brogan.

Chris Brogan writes extensively on the topics of social media and community. While reading his new book Social Media 101 I came across Chapter 48: Who Is Secretly Pitching You? Chris’s version of this post in his new book adds the context that the chapter had generated the idea for his first book Trust Agents.

How do you value trust in a personal or business relationship? Do you think of it as a currency like Chris Brogan does? Share your thoughts in the comments and I promise to respond with mine.

A video blog about the concept of mind dumping that I was exposed to earlier today by an aspiring novelist. I find the topic intriguing as I work on my 31 blog posts for the month of March.

If printing is on the verge of death, then why when I searched Twitter for “Is Print Dead“  did I find over 20 tweets in the past 4 hours? For something dead or dying, printing sure generates a lot of conversation in the Twitter community.

The blogosphere also has plenty to say about printing being or not being dead.

The seed for this post was planted when I read Debbie Kipp’s  If Print Were Really Dead… post. It’s not so much the post as the 20 comments (and responses by Debbie) that the post generated. For those of you that don’t write a blog, getting 20 responses on any post is amazing – getting 20 comments on your third ever blog post is the stuff dreams are made of.  This is clearly a topic that gets people thinking.

Over on Samir Husni’s blog I found his post Start spreading the news: Print is NOT dead… This is a very thought provoking post with an embedded video from some very unlikely bedfellows – five titans of the magazine industry. They got together to tell us in video that printing magazines is not dead and it ended up embedded in a blog post – huh?

When Six Pixels of Separation author Mitch Joel jumped in with Print is Not Dead I knew it was time to join the conversation. While Mitch is a great blogger it’s important to remember that his primary job in life is running his 100+ person creative agency TwistImage. So, when Mitch Joel says print is not dead, trust me folks, print is not dead.

I shared some of my own thoughts on the subject in a recent post Printing (on paper) vs. Google. The print industry is definitely changing. Some sectors like packaging and digital print are hot. Others like traditional magazine and insert printing on web presses – let’s just say not so hot.

A stronger sense of community and less cut throat competition is what all industries need. Before you try and decimate your competitor take a second to understand who your real competitor is – the alternative technology. While I talked about Google being a bigger threat to printers than other printers what I didn’t go into in that post is the good stuff. I and others in the print industry have been using the internet and associated technologies to build communities where we can work together for the betterment of our industry.

What print communities are you an active participant in? Are they on-line, off-line, or best of all a blend of both? Share with us where we can find you on-line. I’ll be keeping my eyes on the comments and I’m looking forward to finding some new print communities to jump into.

My “why” is making JimRaffel.com the best blog I can. Writing for this blog everyday is following my passion. That passion is what drives my desire to find ways to make ColorMetrix more successful with less and less of my time. I’ve managed to reduce my ColorMetrix work week to about 50 hours (down from 60-70) and the extra time is spent here. That’s my why.

The extra hours will be spent writing this blog, reading more great business and personal development books. Spending time with friends and family. The activities that matter to me. Understanding my compelling why has further fueled my desire to take radical thinking to the next level. Your why is probably quite different from mine but we can both use radical thinking to get there.

This week I took a day off (well, worked 2-3 hours instead 10-12). It’s been a long time since I did that and did not feel guilty about it. This is not about time management of priorities, it’s about an overall radical shift in my thinking. Yes, it involves gaining a better understanding of time and priorities but it’s more important to understand that you can do things in very different ways then you are right now.

For me the progression has gone like this:

1. The real, authentic and sustainable methodology became the analysis tool for my entire life and all the decisions I make.

2. Realized that “working hard” had taken me as far as it could and the hours I was working would not remain sustainable for the balance of my life.

3. Understanding that I can only work on one important task at a time and can only complete one or maybe two significant and important tasks a day.

4. Most tasks not included in number 3 above can either;

a. be completed in 15 minutes or
b. don’t need to be done at all.

Number 1 above helped me understand my compelling why and numbers 2, 3 and 4 help me realize it everyday of my life. In a little over 60 days I have gone from struggling to get one blog post a week out to putting out one a day. I have three posts ready to go and a list of ideas for posts so long that many will never be completed. Oh, and ColorMetrix sales for 2010 are just fine.

So, I ask you what’s your compelling why? Please share it with me here in the comments. Let’s start a conversation about your why’s and celebrate our differences yet our common desire to achieve the why!

In the past I kept a stiff upper lip and claimed my glass was always half-full and never half-empty. I realize now that was not always reality.

I chatted about half-awake vs half-asleep the other day with my friend Angie Sorge on Twitter. It was early in the day and she commented that when she is just waking up she is half-awake and when she’s ready to go to sleep for the night she is half-asleep. It was a fun conversation that got me thinking about my perspective on the glass being half-full vs half-empty.

When business was on the upswing all I saw was potential and future opportunity for growth. It never mattered that there was not quite enough money in the checking account to make those things happen. At those moments I was sure the glass was half-full. The opportunity had yet to be realized.

When business was not going so well, there was still be plenty of money in the checking account from the last boom, but I did not see much future opportunity for growth, in fact I saw the exact opposite. At those moments the glass certainly seemed to be half-empty because it felt like it was draining and I could see no way to refill it.

The key is in knowing and understanding how you react to the upswings and the downswings in your life. When the glass is half-full are you over-zealous and over-optimistic like I was? When the glass is half-empty do you get down in the dumps and not immediately start looking for opportunity like I used to?

A downswing in your life has more potential for growth and improvement than an upswing. I’ve figured out that when I see the glass as half-full it’s already on it’s way to being half-empty. Conversely when I see the glass as half-empty it’s already gotten as bad as it’s going to and the upswing is beginning.

By listening to and understanding your feelings you can get ahead of the way you (and most other people) are thinking about the current situation. Therein lies the opportunity. As this most recent economic downturn began and most others had their ears tucked, in I sat down with a business associate whom outsiders viewed as my competitor. Together while business was slow and we had the time, a strategy was forged to help each other grow.

That was over six months ago and now as the economy begins to swing back up we are perfectly positioned to help our industry recover. While our real competitors cut back and cut head count we figured out ways to offer better service and work together. There is real power in community and what Bruce and I have begun to form is a community that we and our customers will be a part of together.

Through my active involvement in the social media movement I have learned much about community in the last year. In what areas of your business or personal life are you discovering new communities?

Here is the video from my speaking engagement at the MKELive Ignite event. I’m in and out of the picture a little at the beginning but do me a favor and hang in there for a few minutes. I was the first speaker and Katie Felten and her team recovered quickly.

I enjoyed the format of the event, because after I spoke I was able to sit back and listen to the rest of the slate of speakers who you can find on MKELive’s YouTube page. Using recent blog posts as my “speaking notes” I set out to inspire the audience to either start blogging or do it more frequently.

My public speaking has come a long way with four engagements this year so far. I’m becoming increasingly comfortable in front of an audience and really starting to have fun with it. Please let me know where you see room for improvement.

I discussed more about my central theme of your blog being like an ongoing job interview here. Do you think that assessment is correct?

If you’re going to be powerless over something why not make it something positive – right? For me it’s this place:

Over the last year I have been replacing negative high risk behaviors with guaranteed negative outcomes with the exact opposite. The Third Tribe community is now one of my favorite places to run and hide when I need a mental break. Why you ask? Well let me tell you why.

In just 30 days as a member I have learned:

• How to improve this blog in so many small ways.
• How to Improve my ColorMetrix business site.
• How to Improve traffic and usability of the ColorMetrix on-line store.
• …and I’m just getting started!

More importantly I have met so many like-minded individuals. Other bloggers, other marketers, other people struggling to understand how business and marketing in the on-line world really work. I’ve been able to interact with people like Chris Brogan, Brian Clark and other heavy hitters in the world of blogging and on-line marketing.

When I am feeling overwhelmed by my day or just need a ten minute break Third Tribe Marketing is where I turn now. The forums are my favorite place in Third Tribe to spend time. I feel safe there – I will write and share things there that are a bit too raw and unedited for this blog. I learn, I contribute, I share with an awesome community of like-minded individuals.

There is a fee for Third Tribe and I know that turns some people off. That’s OK, the heavy hitters in there (and the not so heavy hitters like me) still have blogs where everything is free. I will continue to write here everyday. I will continue to participate in the comments here. This is my home base and everything I do on-line starts and ends right here. I’m not going anywhere. My Membership in Third Tribe makes JimRaffel.com a better place to be.

The fee is paid monthly so the initial “risk” is fairly modest if you are serious about your on-line marketing activities. In addition to the forums I love so much, there has been some amazing seminar content just in the first month. Topics like:

• Building a Business Around a Blog Part 1
  (Darren Rowse with Brian Clark)
• Building a Business Around a Blog Part 2
  (Chris Brogan with Sonia Simone)
• Building a Business Around a Blog Part 3
  (Brian Clark with Sonia Simone)

Plus coming this month more great educational content has been announced:

• Building a Business Around a Blog Part 4
  (Leo Baubata with Darren Rowse)
• Email Marketing Strategies that Work
  (Brian Clark and Sonia Simone)

You don’t just get the audio of the above programs you also get transcripts and worksheets instantly upon joining:

While it could be argued I am writing this post for the affiliate revenue I may earn should some of you decide to sign up, that would be wrong. The revenue will be appreciated to support my blogging habit, but I am much more interested in adding more like minded individuals with different points of view to the community. The forums are already amazing, just imagine how much better they will be with your voice included.

Click the banner and learn a little more.

So, did you go take a look at the community? If so what did you think of Third Tribe Marketing? Also, does a post of this nature bother you? Please let me know!

It’s real because writing is the doing part of thinking.

It’s authentic because my writing comes from the heart about what’s going on in my life right now.

My life is sustainable because my thoughts turn into words which in turn become actions.

Earlier this week I had the privilege to speak at MKELive’s Ignite event. I was not asked to speak until late last week and thought to myself what can I talk about for five minutes? Not an extraordinary length time but as such more difficult to pick a topic for. The MKELive group is social media savvy so I decided to speak about the importance of your blog being the center of your social media universe.

My blog became my speaking notes. An hour before the event I sat in a coffee shop and read my last half dozen posts. A couple things occurred to me (when I say occurred it’s not as if I just thought of this it’s more like saying I “got it”)….

1. Your blog IS your on-line reputation. Tweets come and go at a pretty fast rate. You can still read blog posts I wrote almost five years ago. It is considered bad etiquette to delete old blog posts.

2. Your blog will become a community the instant an audience of ONE reads your first post. Just trust me on this one, I’m five years in and it took a day like yesterday when I had something like a dozen comments in a 24 hour period to realize that what I have built here is a community. A community where one person can inspire another and then we can all feed off the goodness caring between people.

These days LinkedIn is your resume, and your blog and the blogging you do are your interview. All other things being equal I’d like to do business with people who blog. It lets me check out their long-term view. Again, you can go read my posts from almost five years ago (it’s painful for me – I’m a much better writer now) and check the consistency of my story. You can also check out how I adapt to change (the world has changed a lot in five years) by reading through some of the history.

What do you think? Would a perspective employee, vendor, or business partner have a leg up with you if they had several years worth of consistent blog posts for you to read? Please jump in and let me know what you think!

With the release of Seth Godin’s Linchpin (which I have yet to read) there has been a whole lot of buzz in the Blogosphere about “shipping it.” It’s good talk folks about the need to produce deliverable product each day and you should be paying close attention if you are not already doing so.

Ask yourself the questions what do I produce and do I ship it daily? When I answered these questions, my thinking once again went radical on me. My daily priorities have changed so much it makes me wonder how I was even modestly successful up to this point. Answer: I was working hard but not smart most of the time.

I have three priorities in my life;

• ColorMetrix CEO
• JimRaffel.com brand manager
• Most important, husband and father

Above all else and before the rest of my daily tasks, I must ship daily something of value to the constituents of each priority in my life.

In the case of ColorMetrix the highest value item I can produce is an engagement proposal. Buying into our ProofPass solution is a long-term (averaging 3+ years now) two-way commitment and nothing happens at ColorMetrix until an engagement proposal is accepted. The second most valuable item I ship for the company is communications (email and otherwise) related to completing engagement proposals or resolving existing client issues (happy customers are my number one priority).

Writing posts is the A #1 Priority for this blog. Without quality content you have no reason to visit and more importantly return again and again. I can only generate so much traffic with my email signature and witty tweets on Twitter. So, each day I focus on writing one quality post for the blog. In January I managed to produce one every other day. In February I churned out  17 posts in 28 days. With the new “ship it” mentality, March will be the month of 31 posts.

My family comes before my work. They may not always see it that way. Take a look at item #2 from My Top 10 Personal Development Tips.  What they need is what we all need; love, support, attention, and sometimes direction. It’s so simple that sometimes I forget to gaze into my wife’s eyes and ask the question “How was your day sweetheart?” What I then need to produce and ship is kind and patient attention while I listen to the good the bad and the ugly of her day. For the kids it’s a simple “Can I help you with that?” Mine are teenagers now but when they were younger it was showing up for Cub Scouts, Father/Daughter events, and sporting events. Well, more than showing up, being present. I wish I could have some of those moments back to have been more present than I was.

Is it reasonable to ignore all the noise in your daily grind until you produce and ship what provides maximum value to your audience? Is it alright to have only one or two A #1 priorities each day and all the rest of the list falls where it may? Please let me know what you think in the comments, I promise to respond!