Someone sent this email to me. I'm sharing it because I found it interesting. If you can't see the picture on your browser, send me an email and I'll forward the original email to you.

Yesterday, Pete Caputa’s article Sales People Can (and Should) Blog Too prompted me to make a rather long (for me) comment. I was simultaneously having a conversation on LinkedIn about some of the dumb stuff that we do and that resulted in this Homer Simpson-esque article titled 101 Sales/Marketing Mistakes (That I'm Never Gonna Make Again!). Then, this morning, Greg Brown posted an update to LinkedIn titled, 34 Must-Have Tools to Launch your Startup from Idea to Exit.

…and I found myself reflecting on the way I built my business and what I would do differently today. I also found myself thinking about all the Hubspot Partners that I’ve spoken with lately, whose prospects have built their businesses with cold calls (think hedge funds, telemarketers, time shares, credit card consolidators, etc.), networking/referrals (think CPA’s, lawyers, financial advisors, etc.) or trade shows (think home/garden contractors, banks, manufacturers, chamber/association members) and some claim that they do it all plus spend oodles of money on advertising and traditional marketing.

The rest of the title is "That I'm Never Gonna Make Again!".

I watched part of “Meet the Press” this weekend, and learned that Supreme Court Justice Scalia had said something like “…racial entitlement was difficult to undo”. It got me thinking about entitlement(s) in general.

Remember this scene and quote from "A Few Good Men"?

February was an eye-opener!

Once upon a time, I got an email from my son, Mark, suggesting that I check out this new thing called LinkedIn. I joined on 2/4/2004. Several years later, I found out that I was actually the 197,161^st person to join LinkedIn. That made me curious. So, I looked at Mark Roberge (#36,253) and Pete Caputa (#7,346) to see when they had joined. Here’s why I joined. Back then, LinkedIn was suggesting that if I was connected to Pete, and I was connected to Mark, and Pete wanted to be introduced to Mark, he’d ask me for an introduction. Now, if I know them both well enough, trust and respect them enough, I’m gonna make that introduction knowing that they’ll both be professional and bring value to knowing each other. Now, honestly, like many early adopters back then, I didn’t do much with it. I was a face to face, belly to belly salesman that didn’t have much use for this fad called the internet. LinkedIn grew without me, but eventually I started using it more. Now, I’m on LinkedIn every day along with 200 million others.

Last December, Lori Richardson (#29,426) and I had a blog-versation about whether or not to show or hide our connections on LinkedIn. (We agreed to disagree.) I just read Lori’s article, “Top Mistakes Using LinkedIn for Sales – Impersonal Requests”. This isn’t a new topic and many that I respect have written on it before. Frank Belzer (#18,132,536) shared 7 rules in 2011. Trish Bertuzzi (#230,786) has written six articles with LinkedIn in the title and the aforementioned Pete ‘I’ve got LinkedIn seniority’ Caputa has 10 different articles mentioning LinkedIn. Casey Lockwood (#26,117,371) invited me to connect last October 16^th and wound up writing this article for my blog.

I thought that I wrote on this before, but when I searched my archives, I couldn’t find what I was looking for. So, here’s what’s on my mind? What is a consultant? How did they get to be one? Are they consultative?

What is a consultant?

Elaine and I went to see Silver Linings Playbook yesterday and as sometimes happens, I left with a great lesson. If you haven't seen it, I am not going to spoil the movie for you.

Updated for 2019!

I just re-read Frank Belzer's comment on my rudeness because I remembered that I wanted to reply to it. (Don't worry. He was very polite and I will be, too.)