I stumbled upon a list of the top 150 marketing blogs:

http://adage.com/power150/

Warning: If you’re not a Google Reader user, I highly recommend hooking yourself to this flow of RSS goodness. It’s the only way to “read” 100 websites in less than an hour.

Sometimes, I’m afraid of conflict. I fear that it will tear me away from the person that I must confront. Worst yet, I wonder if that person will like me, respect me, want to be around me, if I say the things that are in my head, on the tip of my tongue, ready to roll off with the slightest bit of push. Moments come, and moments go. Will I say it, think it or simply ignore it?

I watched a video of a local Nashville family talk about their compelling story of spending eight, yes 8, days with their daughter only six months ago. Copeland Farley had Trisomy 18; a disease that ends in death before the first week of life is lived for more than 50% of the children born with it [ watch it here ].

When I think of confrontation, many of us think of duking it out with coworkers, friends, family, children and even our spouses. Do we dare think that God would allow or even want us to go at it with Him? I think so.

“I just want people to know, that you can be furious with God, and still be in relationship with him.” —Boothe Farley

What does it look like to allow ourselves to be furious with God? It’s not like He doesn’t hear what really goes on in our heads anyway.

Some say, intimacy only comes through conflict.

In 2006, I sat down with an author friend, Steve Stockman, author of Walk On: The Spiritual Journey of U2, to get to know each other a bit more. We talked about book writing, Church history, post-modernism and Fair Trade.

If you’ve known me for more than a year or two, it’s quite possible that you’ve heard me state that I believe that the US population, alone, could eradicate much of third world poverty without, and that’s the key, without the assistance and or funding of the government. Seem like it might be too good to be true? Not so.

Over at EverydayWoman.tv (men, get past the name), my friend Steve Stockman tells of a compelling story about the first-hand impact of Fair Trade in third-world countries. Here’s an excerpt to whet your appetite:

As we walked through her village, she told us about the lovely little gardens, the beautifully painted houses with the solar-paneled roofs and the hopes to build a workshop. We visited the school the workers had built, and children with dirty little noses sang to us. We watched teachers making a few resources go a long, long way. There were lots of smiles and photographs.

Then, we turned a corner out behind the school and there it was … that fence. Our eyes widened, our mouths fell open, and our minds were bombarded with a whole new reality. The fence was what separated the Fair Trade vineyard from the vineyard next door, which had not taken on the Fair Trade mantle.

Please take a moment to read about this compelling story. You won’t regret it.

Fair Trade is a real issue that has real impacts. Simply asking for Fair Trade coffee when you buy at Starbucks or any other coffee shop, can not only satisfy your coffee urge (or addiction), but literally change the lives of those in third-world countries. It’s undeniable and it’s true.

More on Fair Trade in the coming weeks and months.

Social networking has largely been used to help people get in touch with current, old and future friends. However, one site has taken a stab at connecting people who know the people you know.

LinkedIn.com has become a surprisingly functional resource for me. Many people have asked me what LinkedIn is. I suppose my invitation for them to join me on this network maybe see as an attempt to build my confidence level by how many friends, or “connections” I have, but quite the opposite is true.

Everything that we’ve been given is a gift that we are to steward. It happens to be that over the past 10 years, I’ve been able to grow quite a long list of contacts. While it may pale in comparison to some, it’s been very fruitful for me. Sites like LinkedIn allow connectors like myself to go beyond my current arenas of influence and “connect” with other colleagues, friends, coworkers and prospect clients. But these reasons don’t satisfy my interest entirely.

Ever have a moment on the phone with a horrible customer service rep and wish that you could do something about it? Well, most likely you can. Simply go to www.linkedin.com, click on search and enter in the name of the company you just interacted with and type in “vice president,” for example, into the job title search box. Once you hit search, you’re likely to find all sorts of people who work for this company…most of whom’s names would never, I repeat NEVER be found on their corporate site.

You see, social networking is more than a shallow perception of popularity, it can be a channel of influence if used correctly. In such cases as customer service and other examples, websites like Linkedin.com simply become a world wide address book, where even President’s, CEO’s, VP’s and the like offer up their contact information like a friend would his phone number.

The internet is changing things.

Over at EightQuestions.info, I’ve posted a new survey that aims to answer the question of, “who are you voting for and why?” So far, after just 14 responses, Hillary Clinton doesn’t stand a chance. Although it’s too early in the survey to determine what the majority will do, it’s hard to ignore that she’s had 0 votes between Obama and McCain. While that proves to be somewhat interesting, I think it’s expected. Yet, I wonder about something different.

If you’re one of those people who don’t resonate with the any of the Presidential candidates, come election day, would you still vote? Let’s put it another way, if you’re a conservative Republican, but you don’t like John McCain, would you opt to not vote at all? What if you’re a democrat but you don’t like either Hillary or Obama, would you still vote or leave your voice out of the polls? Are you planning on voting against your affiliated “party?”

What would you do? Sound off here. I’ll report my findings early next week.

Every time I watch the Microsoft Sync commercial, I laugh at the guy who commands the treadmill on, only to hit the machine at full force and fall on his back (ouch). Why?

He has something that I wish I had…complete trust.

In the commercial he calls out and runs to the treadmill in the same manner in which I grab a chair and sit down. I don’t think about it. I sit as if it will always be there; without question to the chairs reliability or my trust that it will support me. But isn’t it funny when someone sits in a chair and it breaks? We find amusement because we too, didn’t expect the chair to fail. In fact, it’s abnormal not to rely on a chair.

If sitting on the promise of a chair requires complete trust, and I believe that God’s Word is true and right, then how do I find myself trusting a chair more than His promises? Should I, a professing and believing Christ-follower put more trust in His promises than the chair in which I sit? I should, but I don’t. It’s more normal for me to trust a chair than it is for me to trust that God will heal the sick, broken hearted and wounded.

His treadmill is my trust.

Trust on!

Savannah joined me at the office while Kristy went out to lunch. She offers some great advice so I’ve decided to make her available for $5000/day. Such a bargain.

I’m curious about your knowledge and observance of Good Friday and Easter. Would you mind taking this survey?

www.eightquestions.info

Last night around 7pm, the snow started to fall. The news people called this storm, the “big one.” Funny how that means different things to different people.

By the time we got up this morning, we had a 4″ blanket of snow on the ground and we couldn’t resist from getting out in it for a bit. Here are some fun pictures from our adventure out.

Poor girl can’t sit up on her own yet.

Isn’t that the sweetest face!

You can see the rest of the snow pictures here.

Today, the first Motiveight marketing initiative to get new business arrived at the offices of 18 prospects; some known, some are a totally random attempt to try to get the attention of a prospect customer. It is my hope that I’ll get at least four solid leads on new business or orders. That would bring a 25% response rate, which is unheard of in most businesses.

The effort was to send out a reminder to “spring forward” on Saturday night (Daylight savings time starts on Sunday at 2am). To creatively do so, we sent out a white box with a brass slinky inside with a message that read:

Read the rest of this entry »

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