John Wooden’s Greatest Quote for Social Media

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Wooden

Picture: Cover image of “The Wisdom of Wooden,” available on Amazon.

Coach John Wooden was a great man and a great coach.

From 1964 to 1975, his college basketball teams won 10 national championships with four of those being undefeated seasons. It’s an unprecedented level of success before or after.

But he didn’t view himself as just a coach. One of his goals was to prepare his players for life, not just athletics, and many of his players remember him the best for this. He was also known for his salient, wisdom-imparting quotes which were referred to as “Woodenisms.”

One such quote relates very well to the social-media activity of today. No, he didn’t speak it about social media, but it’s still very fitting.

Here’s the quote:

Never mistake activity for achievement.

Think about that for a second. Can you see how it relates to social media? Yes, it’s very appropriate. Let’s talk about how.

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Filed Under: Social Media

Why Everyone Is Talking about Platform Building and Why You Probably Should Be Too

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Speakers

After I started getting into digital marketing a couple of years ago, I kept hearing the word “platform” being thrown around a lot. It was used like this:

Businesses need to build a platform to get their message out.

Writers should build a platform if they want to get noticed by publishers.

A large enough platform helps bloggers land book deals.

The number of ways it was used went on and on, but quite frankly, it annoyed me. I was sick of hearing people talking about platform this and platform that.

As a marketer, I cared more about sales and conversions. I cared about how many visitors turned into customers, not how many turned into Twitter followers.

I felt  like Allen Iverson in his famous rant about practice (in case you’ve never seen it, a video is embedded at the end of this post). My rant would have gone something like this:

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Filed Under: Internet Marketing

Is Saving Money the Number One Reason for Spending It?

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Discount Offer Sign

There’s a question I’ve been asking myself lately which is this: Is saving money the number one reason for spending it?

Think about that for a second.

Here’s the question again: Is saving money the number one reason for spending it?

What does that even mean? Let’s walk through a hypothetical scenario to consider this further.

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Filed Under: Marketing 101

The Top Ten Ways to Know You Have Entrepreneurial DNA

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DNA

Have you ever wondered whether or not you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur?

A lot of people do, so I put together a list of the top ten ways to know if you have entrepreneurial DNA. It’s a fun list, and it isn’t in any way definitive. But if some of the points describe you, there’s a good chance that you have entrepreneurial DNA.

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Filed Under: Entrepreneurial Advice

Why Another Marketing Blog?

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Nobody has actually asked me this question yet, but I thought to ask it myself.

Why another marketing blog?

As you may know, there are already a lot of blogs that talk about marketing. Some of them focus on social media, and some of them are about startups. But for sure, there are a lot of marketing blogs.

So do people really need another website that talks about marketing? My answer is yes, and here’s why:

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5 High School Grammar Rules Great Writers Learn to Break

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High school grammar booksWe’ve all been there before–sitting in Mrs. Thompson’s (or whoever’s) high school English class–getting grilled about proper grammar for essay writing:

“Never use first or second person.”

“Never start a sentence with but or and.”

“Never end a sentence with a preposition.”

“And never, ever write a paragraph that’s only one sentence long.”

What’s the problem with these rules?

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Filed Under: Writing Tips

7 Priceless Business Quotes from Warren Buffett

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Photo taken at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in Laguna Niguel, CA.

Photo taken at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in Laguna Niguel, CA.

Recently, Forbes held the first Forbes 400 summit, which was a meeting between legendary investor Warren Buffett and rap business mogul Jay-Z.  The main event was an hour-long talk withSteve Forbes interviewing Mr. Buffett and Jay-Z.

You can read the full interview by visiting the Forbes website.  I’ve also included some of Mr. Buffett’s most salient business advice below.  His quote about how to beat Bobby Fischer is my favorite.  What’s your favorite quote?

Quote #1
“There’s a whole bunch of things I don’t know a thing about. I just stay away from those. I stay within what I call my circle of competence. Tom Watson [IBM founder] said it best. He said, ‘I’m no genius, but I’m smart in spots, and I stay around those spots.’”

Quote #2
“That’s a little bit like these rules I have. The first rule is don’t lose, and the second rule is never forget the first rule. It isn’t so much having a lot of brilliant decisions, it’s just not having some terrible ones.”

Quote #3
“[Ben Graham] also taught me to see a stock not as something with a ticker symbol that wiggles around but to think about it as part of a business. Don’t get elated because something had gone up or depressed because it went down. If I knew the facts, and it went down, I bought more of it. He also taught me that famous lesson about a margin of safety, that you don’t drive a truck that weighs 9,900 pounds across a bridge that says “Limit 10,000 pounds” because you can’t be that sure. If you see something like that, go a little further down the road and find one that says, “Limit 20,000 pounds.” That’s one you drive across.”

Quote #4
“I had the luck of getting turned down by Harvard, which meant I got to study under Ben Graham at Columbia, which changed my life. All kinds of things have worked out. So I just hope I stay lucky. I’ve been lucky for 80 years.”

Quote #5
“But if you’ve got the principles, if you know what makes a good business, if you know what makes a good manager, if you know what makes a good product, and you learn that in one business, there is some transference to other businesses. As you go along, you learn what things you’re not going to understand. Knowing what to leave out is just as important as knowing what to focus on. Somebody said how to beat Bobby Fischer; you play him any game except chess. And so I don’t play Bobby Fischer at chess.”

Quote #6
“When my wife was pregnant, I didn’t think I was going to deliver a baby. If I get a toothache or something, I don’t take out my own tooth. I turn it over. I followAdam Smith‘s advice; turn it over to a specialist.”

Quote #7
“Part of making good decisions in business is recognizing the poor decisions you’ve made and why they were poor. I’ve made lots of mistakes. I’m going to make more. It’s the name of the game. You don’t want to expect perfection in yourself. You want to strive to do your best. It’s too demanding to expect perfection in yourself.”

Which quote is your favorite? Share it by leaving a comment below.

Photo Credit: Fortune Live Media

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