Categories: Articles

Are You Excited To Be Here?

How do you read Blogs? Listen to Podcasts? Use Facebook? Is it simply a necessary evil, so you can look all-knowing in those marketing and strategy meetings, or are you genuinely excited about the new channels (and new possibilities)? Do you look at (and play with) the channels with one eye open? Are you leery of them? Not sure how useful they are? Or, do you simply read some Blogs awaiting for the moment to scream, "aha, I knew you were a moron!"?

Are you excited to be here?

I am.

And, it’s not just because I love to write, share and explore the amazing new channels of Marketing and how they resonate with consumers. I actually love this space. It’s the reason I don’t take a hiatus in the summer or a break for vacation from Blogging and Podcasting. Taking a couple of minutes every day to put some thoughts down on this Six Pixels of Separation Blog is my break and it’s a mini summer vacation every time I hit the "publish" button. I don’t see this Blog (or the Podcast or Twitter or Facebook) as additional layers of business responsibilities. I see it as my free time to play and explore.

I hope you do too.

If your sole purpose in pursuing these channels is to make money, get a raise (or promotion), cause a scene or make fun of others, my guess is there’s a playground just around the block from where you live with some vulnerable people for you to prey on. No, this Blog posting was not inspired by an incident or an individual. I was doing my morning workout at 6 am, listening to some great Podcasts (Managing The Gray, Jaffe Juice, Marketing Over Coffee and For Immediate Release), and then cooled down (post-workout) by reading through some Blog feeds in Google Reader when it struck me that I am still so excited by everything. It inspires me more and more everyday. It’s not work. I don’t do it to grow my business. I do it so that I can grow as a person – by learning and sharing more and more each day.

Sorry if this reads sappy, but it’s true.

In the span of about sixty minutes this morning (while most were still sleeping in my neck of the woods), the content I was devouring inspired five new thoughts I’m hoping to tackle (four, if you include this one) on this Blog, three case stories for the Six Pixels of Separation book and two topics for me to blab about on the next Six Pixels of Separation – The Twist Image Podcast.

Being passionate seems like such a cliche these days.

That may be so, but it’s still a very powerful personal driver.

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.