Have you ever been hit by a car?

I have.

And I have the brain damage scars to prove it.

When I got hit by a car, I was almost the same age as my youngest child is today.

Six.

And at the time, it didn’t seem like it was such a big deal.

Even now, I joke about how my mom told me to “go play in traffic” and I didn’t want to disobey, so…

But that isn’t really what happened.

What really happened isn’t very glamorous at all.

In fact, it might not be too far of a stretch to say it could make the dumb-move-hall-of-fame.

I was hit by an F-150 truck in 1976 on a road with exactly one truck on it.

The one that hit me.

And it was driven by a teenager.

I spent the better part of the next few years in-and-out of the hospital getting lots of plastic surgery done.

Before plastic surgery was cool.

Which can only mean one of two things:

1. I move slow
2. I am tougher than I look

But for now I think I will stick by my story where my mom told me to go play in traffic.

It is always fun to see the look on people’s face when I tell them that is what happened.

When I was growing up, my family didn’t have very much money.

I always wished that my parents were loaded and that they would have bought me trucks and quads and whatever-else-teenagers-could-want, but they didn’t.

And when it came time for college, I became very familiar with what getting a government-subsidized loan looked like.

Because somehow — at least for those first few years of college — I didn’t exactly have the skill-set to earn enough money to pay for college.

But in an ironic twist of justice, many of the management lessons that I learned as a waiter are still with me today.

For example, I still see people ask the question “do you want it right or do you want it now” on a semi-regular basis.

In the management-training-ground that also happened to be a restaurant, there were three groups of people:

1. Highly commissioned salespeople (waiters),
2. Highly fixed compensated operations people (cooks)
3. Management.

Generally speaking you were in one of the three groups.

And in a foreshadowing as to how corporate America runs, someone in management got a bright idea one day.

They would start timing everything with a stopwatch.

Stuff like how long it took to greet a customer once they sat down, how long it took to get their drink order to them, how long it took to get their meal delivered and how long it took to check on them after  you delivered the meal.

All-in-all, I think there was 417 different times that you were supposed to meet – and if you didn’t… well, I guess something bad happened.

And as it was intended to do – it increased the sense of urgency:  in the wait staff.

Now that someone was walking around with a stopwatch,  you had waiters and waitresses running around trying to hit every time that was dictated by the manager-guy who was timing everything.

The problem was… someone forgot to clue the cooks in on the idea that the waiters were now being timed.

And so on a regular basis, you would find the waiter looking like he (or she) was about to explode asking the cook “uh, how long on those onion rings?”

And the cook would look over with a brilliantly sarcastic look on his face and ask one question:

Do you want it right or do you want it now?

And then one night it happened.

The stopwatch was put away forever — or at least as long as I worked there.

Manager-guy was standing by the kitchen window with his stopwatch in hand and I asked the question:

How long on the onion rings for table 143?

And out came the usual reply:

Do you want them right or now?

And I lost it.

I took one step toward the manager and looked him right in the eye and asked him one question:

Do you want to eat that stopwatch right or now?

And I think he got my point.

So if you are in sales and someone from the operations team asks you if you want it right or now, walk right over to the person who has the vested interested in the organization’s success, look them in the eye and ask them if they have ever eaten a stopwatch.

And you might be surprised at how quickly they focus on aligning the organizational interests.

“I am a social media expert.”

Every time I hear someone declare anything close to the above, I smile.

I don’t know if it really is possible to be a social media expert, but if such a thing is possible, I now know where to find these social media experts…

SMUrcle.

A funny-sounding name for a big idea.

The Big Idea

The idea behind SMUrcle is to get as many people as possible to have somewhere they can go to learn about things like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and WordPress.

All hot topics, all easy to use if you know what you are doing and an expert gives you a little bit of coaching.

SMUrcle is:

“I am a social media expert.”

Every time I hear someone declare anything close to the above, I smile.

I smile because I am not entirely sure what a social media expert is – but if there is such a thing, I know this…

I am friends with a few of them.

And they can teach you a thing or two about how to utilize social media tools to improve your business.

Now happening at SMUrcle.

Do you have small children?

Try this.

Go and buy a King Size Snickers bar at Circle K and take it home.

Sit down with your 3,4 or 5 year old.

Explain to them that you are going to talk to them about choices and how important it is to make good choices.

Get them to agree with you that it is important to make good choices.

And once they agree with you that it is important to make good choices, tell them that you brought them a present.

Then tell them:

“Wait! Actually, I got you TWO presents and you get to choose one.”

Then show them the King Sized Snickers that you bought earlier at Circle K.

And tell them:

“You can choose this Snickers bar now or you can wait until tonight to go to dinner with me at Morton’s Steak House.”

And let them pick.

Chances are your small child will make the same decision that many adults make.

Happiness now vs satisfaction later.

It plays out every day.

All across America.

The other day one of my friends noted that I was a creature of habit and as I thought about it, I couldn’t help but do a little self-analysis and come to the conclusion:

He might be right.

Consider that I generally:

• Show up to work at pretty much the same time every day.
• Park in pretty much the same place every day.
• Wear the same color of shirt every day.
• Haven’t changed my hairstyle since 1985.

That all sounds very predictable.

But is being predictable a bad thing?

Maybe.

But it doesn’t have to be.

Consider the possibility that being predictable can lead to being memorable.

And being memorable is what can make a good result a great one.

Legends are built on events where seemingly predictable situations result in surprising, memorable outcomes.

For example:

• Most people expected Mike Tyson to knock out Buster Douglas.
• In 1980, most people expected the Russians to beat the Americans in Hockey.
• Few people in 1991 expected Coack K.’s Duke Blue Devils to beat Tark-The-Shark’s Running Rebels from UNLV.

In each of the above situations – something memorable happened.

Something no one really expected as an outcome.

And in each case — I suspect that there was a whole-lot of predictability that went into the preparation of the people who were responsible for the memorable outcome.

Predictability.

It just may lead to being memorable.

Or, at least I hope it does.

If you have managed to somehow avoid the current downturn in the economy impacting your pocketbook, congratulations.

Nice work.

My hat is off to people who can play both the ups and the downs of the economic cycle and win the financial game of life regardless of the economic cycle.

Or maybe it is just luck.

Heck, isn’t that what many of your friends say about you who weren’t so lucky and have been smashed by the recession?

That you were just lucky?

Lucky or not – being smarter or shreweder or whatever — I have found one common trait among pretty much everyone I have met in life who has achieved any degree of financial success:

They are resilient.

I am not just talking about kind-of-resilient, I am talking about being able to take a bone-jarring, life-threatening hit and yet they bounce right back up, asking for more.

These people are tough-as-nails, even if they look like Mother Teresa.

Being resilient is very similar, but not the exact same as the Back Alley Factor.

Suddenly hit with a surprise right cross and been knocked silly?

These people manage to pick themselves up off the canvas and get back in the game.

Been rejected by someone very close to them because they were in pursuit of happiness?

They mourn the loss, but they don’t lose focus on what they are trying to accomplish.

Took a shot to the ego because something didn’t go as they planned?

These people don’t hide in a hole and pretend it never happened. They own up to it, apologize if needed and get on with gettin’ on.

Resiliency.

I see it everywhere.

In people who are at the top of their game.

“You should blog!”

And when someone asks exactly why they should blog, every social media guru with a bus tour whips out a list that starts with something close to branding and ends hopefully with at least a synonym for increasing net profit.

But here is one reason I bet you a Diet Pepsi you have never heard any of these gurus declare in one of their top 10 reasons that you should blog…

You should blog in case you die.

There.

Hopefully I was the first person who ever told you that.

Why you should blog in case you die:

When I was six years old (not very long after I learned to drive), I lived in Driggs, Idaho and was outside playing in the mud with one of my younger brothers when a man and woman pulled into our driveway.

They were family friends and nothing seemed all that out-of-the ordinary until the man came up to me and said something like “hey, let’s go for a walk” as the woman went into our house to talk to my mom.

In the next 5 minutes, that poor couple had to deliver the message that 4 boy’s dad and one woman’s 29 year old husband had died unexpectedly in a plane crash.

Fast forward 32 years later.

Last week, I was moving some stuff around and I came across a box of stuff that I have hauled around for years and found myself going through things thinking about the different stages of the journey of my life.

And then I came across something I suspect few people probably have:  a letter that my dad wrote me with his hunt-and-peck typewriter that was essentially his best attempt at documenting some of the things that were important to him and why – in case he died.

A letter he wrote to his six year old son who was someday going to become a man.

A letter that he said he took the time to write just in case anything were to happen to him.

And shortly after he wrote it – his time at the party of life ended.

But he left me something that I would take with me forever:

He left me his letter.

And each time I read that  letter along my path of life, I get an entirely different message from it. Funny how experience can make you wiser and open your eyes to different things you are unable to see fully when you are young.

Like what really matters.

And what doesn’t.

And how some things change with the times.

And how some things just never change – no matter what year it is.

Like fathers passing on lessons to their sons.

And now, virtually everyone has the opportunity to invest a little bit of time and share with others some of their thoughts. Or experiences. Or stories. Or whatever… that will be there forever - or as long as you pay your hosting bill.

So the next time that someone tells you that “blogs are forever” just remember the one reason that may be more important than any other that you should blog:

You should blog in case you die.

Your kids will thank you someday.

Our first #SEOTuesday was a success. We all got into a room and plotted against everyone who wasn’t there how we could go and steal all of their links and rule the world.

Ok, so maybe that is a stretch.

But we did learn how to “steal” links – and have pretty much everyone thank you for helping make the web a better place.

Here is the slide deck from the presentation – and if you weren’t there this week, be sure to join us next week for more #SEOTuesday fun!

If you are a local SEO in Phoenix and want to lead next weeks #SEOTuesday session (you guys know who you are ), get in touch with me and I will get with you about possible subjects.

See everyone next week!

Now that I am somewhere near the point in age where many people have a mid-life crisis (no, not me of course), I have enough business road miles on me to have seen a few things.

I haven’t seen everything yet, but I have seen enough to be able to generally understand the rules of business and have some ideas of what works and doesn’t work.

Which is a long-winded way of saying “I ain’t no rookie no more“.

And while I was thinking about how overrated office space is, I had another thought:

What is it with people who get Cubicle Envy?

If you have worked in an office setting for any length of time, surely you have seen this.

Someone shows up on their first day of work and is assigned a “work space” – which for many people directly translates into that wonderful invention called a cubicle.

They move in, and then they immediately start to round up the necessary items they think they will need to get their job done.

Stuff like a tape dispenser, a stapler, computer, monitor, chair, phone and whatever else that is really just an inanimate object with very little inherent value but will seemingly make them feel like they will be more productive.

And then they do whatever-it-is-that-they-were-hired-to-do.

And then it begins.

They start to get infected with Cubicle Envy.

I personally classify Cubicle Envy as a disease – because once someone is infected with it, I haven’t seen it go away without extreme doses of radiation – and even then, it sometimes never fully goes away, it just may go into remission for a period of time.

They notice that the person sitting three cubicles down has a slightly nicer Aeron chair.

Or they see the person sitting directly across from them has a monitor that is an inch wider than theirs.

Or they hear about how lucky the person is at the end of the row who gets to put the color printer in their cubicle because they get to print out birthday cards when someone has a birthday.

And by this point, they are completely infected with Cubicle Envy.

And the way they begin to feed the monster that is Cubicle Envy is they start improving their temporary personal domain one slightly better chair, bigger monitor and color printer at a time.

Until finally – they have managed to build up the nicest cubicle on the entire floor. Heck, maybe even the whole building. And if they are really persistent, over the period of only a few years – they could be running for Cubicle of the Company award.

And then it happens.

They get fired.

Or quit.

And they go to another company.

And have to start all over again at the bottom of the cubicle food chain.

So if you are reading this — and you have the power to put your mind over your inner desire to be completely infected with Cubicle Envy, do the smart thing:

Find a co-working space near you and get busy with what really matters — improving the lives of others and turning a profit.

Office space is overrated.

Really.

Back in 1997, I was an intern getting paid something like $12 an hour working for Novell. If you remember back to that time, Novell was riding the tail end of the Netware wave and was in the process of getting dominated by Microsoft in more ways than one. Heck, Eric Schmidt was even my boss for a while before he got wise to it and left for some start up named Google that no one had ever heard of.

And so Novell was going through a series of layoffs – and not just a few people at once.

I was an intern who happened to sit on a floor of about 30 or so people who were higher-level executives and did things for Novell that all sounded really important. Business planning. Mergers and Acquisitions. Strategy. Someone was in charge of Human Resources.

Oh, and me.

To this day, I don’t know how I ended up with an office on that floor, but I found myself going to lunch every day with quite a few people who were loads smarter than I was and learned a lot.

And then one day, it happened.

The entire floor got laid off.

As in everyone-except-for-me.

I didn’t fully realize this at the time, but it is amazing how many layoffs you can avoid just by being someone who makes $12/hour.

So I came to work for the next few weeks and no one showed up to check on me.

And then I did what any reasonable intern with any self respect would do…

I moved into the corner office where one of the old Vice Presidents of Something used to preside over his kingdom.

Made myself right at home. Put my feet up on his desk. Put my soda in his fridge. Couldn’t call his secretary though, she no longer worked there. Life couldn’t be better.

Sat there for about a year and no one ever knew.

I might have been the only $12/hour intern in America who got to sit in the corner office of an executive suite of a Fortune 500 company at the time.

And looking back on it – I think it may have helped me develop my opinion that office space doesn’t matter.

After leaving Novell, I have worked for companies large and small – and I think I have enough experience under my belt now to say that the actual, physical location and condition of an office are somewhat unimportant, it is the people that show up there and contribute every day that make it happen.

Now maybe it is possible that you can take a high performing group of people from a lower class office space and put them into another space and make them higher performing — but I doubt you can take the bad news bears, put them in a better office and watch magic happen.

When you think about it – an organization is nothing more than a group of people with a common goal (or goals) and work in tandem to achieve that goal.  An organization can be a company, a non profit organization, a charity – or heck – even just an idea.

Enter Gangplank.

I have been going to Gangplank for two of their spaces (and they are about to move to their third) and just by showing up at these two locations and watching the activity there has pretty much solidified my opinion at this point that:

Office space doesn’t really matter, the people who contribute to the overall objective do.

And it is under that same idea that #RETT is gaining momentum. There is a group of people across the country that are starting to nail down different spaces – any kind of space – where people can gather.

And contribute.

In an open work space.

In a collaborative environment.

And not because I shared them my findings about what really matters when thinking about office space, but because they seemingly have discovered on their own…

Office space is overrated.

But the talent, effort, passion, sharing, open attitude of the humans who show up wherever that office space is located is what matters.