Do you ever stop and think about the people who have influenced your life and career?  I do -- and I highly recommend it; we're all an amalgam of the people and situations that we've encountered.  That's what makes us all unique.  

I learned to become competent through a lot of trial and error -- sometimes surprising myself by landing easy successes when I thought a project would be hard; and sometimes landing hard on my butt, wondering what the heck I'd done wrong.  Success means you simply got up one more time than you got knocked down -- you set stretch goals for yourself, and you always keep learning.

Oh, and I thank my lucky stars that I figured out in my early 20's that the best way to learn to do something is to find a MENTOR, someone who will take the time to help guide and direct you as you learn and grow.  I've been extremely fortunate to have several hands-on mentors, friends, and colleagues who taught me some of the most important lessons ever.  From some of these people I learned a trick that's helped me in amazing ways:  when I find an expert I admire, I reach out and let them know. Sometimes I reach them directly; sometimes I don't.  Either way, I've learned how to study success and model it.  Now that I'm deeper into my career, I am nearly always honored when someone younger asks for my advice -- I remember those people who helped me get rolling, and I pay it forward.

I read.  A lot.  I am a voracious, omnivorous consumer of prose.  Now that I own a NOOK (Nope, not a Kindle, and no more iPad -- I LOVE my NOOK!) It's jammed full of fact and fiction by some of my heroes.  

More and more, I'm coming to rely on LinkedIn's Groups because of two main elements that resonate for me:  First, the simple self-selection process that happens as you seek out groups that interest you helps to define who's in your Tribe.  Second, the ability to pretty easily access people all over the world who have similar professional interests (with the emphasis on PROFESSIONAL).  It's one if the main reasons I've fallen away from Facebook Fascination (though, yeah, I do still use it - but I've got my profile locked down to only actual family and actual friends).  LinkedIn provides a great soapbox and sounding board.  

Jim Grinney and Sam Eidson are the owners of 90octane, and Melissa Humbert is their amazing second-in-command.  I adore these people, flat out.  When I hired them for online advertising at my last company, I had no idea how important they would become to me personally and professionally.  

Aside from the plain fact that they are superbly competent as an organization -- they've been recognized with tons of awards and a place on the Inc. 5000 list -- they are also wonderfully kind, gracious and warm human beings, the kind you want on your team.  These are super smart and totally decent people.  I love the "super smart" part!  We had a number of people rotate through our account team in four years of working with them, and every single one was whip-smart and totally into online marketing.  We worked together to push the envelope, which was challenging at the very traditional company I worked for.  The results we achieved working together were just jaw-dropping, the kind of numbers that people are hard-pressed to believe:  increases of 400%, 1500% -- things like that.  They wrote up a case study on our work together, and I remember one line I used that they included, which was that I had "kissed a lot of digital frogs before finding 90octane..."  That was true.  Coming from San Francisco and Seattle, and determined to find a competent local interactive agency that could handle the sort of high-value strategic online marketing I wanted, I had interviewed many companies, and even hired a couple of total bombs.  Then 90octane swept me off my feet.  They dazzled me with their smarts and their competence -- and their results. In the past year,  I've come to know their team on a more personal level and I'm more impressed than ever.  They make their clients look good -- and they also make them better marketers.  I love that company.

I have a brute-force test to gauge the chops of anyone I meet who tells me they're in marketing: I just bring up the name Guy Kawasaki, and see if their face lights up or looks blank.  Blank = poser or neophyte.  
Guy is one of my lifetime heroes:  he's the original Apple Mac Evangelist, founder of Alltop.com and Garage Ventures, venture capitalist extraordinaire, superb author (I have all of his books), and possibly the most interesting public speaker you'll ever run across. I met Guy back in 1995 through my friend Dr. Bill Meade (who served as a bringer-of-cool-examples and researcher for several of Guy's books), and have admired him ever since.  I still keep this photo he gave me seventeen years ago on my bulletin board in my home office -- he's sort of a marketing feng shui angel looking down on me.  One comment I remember clearly from the Bootcamp for Startups he held in Bellevue, WA while I was working for Microsoft in Redmond, still holds absolutely true:  the contacts you make early in your career will move up, just as you do -- so stay in touch with people, especially the talented ones.

Talk about a blast from the past!  I've recently traded emails with Primo Angeli, a man who is a legend in packaging and graphic design, and who owned the company where I was lucky enough to be hired for my first official entry-level gig.  He'd been on my mind lately, especially as I was putting this list of Influences together -- because I was completely in awe of him and his crew of amazingly talented designers. It's funny how much DETAIL I can remember about that job; I wonder if that's just because it was a creme-de-la-creme firm, or simply because I was so excited about the work the company did.  

Working for Primo Angeli's company gave me the opportunity to observe how a truly first-class creative agency operated.  Although I started at the most entry-level gig possible (Receptionist!) during my time there, I also did a stint working Accounts Payable (which meant I got to see all the INVOICES that needed to be paid -- which gave me a very clear notion of what creative production actually costs) and my final, best job there as Marketing Assistant to a bighearted, Blarney-filled Irish VP of Marketing/Business Development who was simply amazing.  That last job taught me three things that have stuck with me:  focus, scale, and rejection.  As in:  

1. FOCUS:  to market a high-end, highly specialized creative service, you need to pick your targets well, and learn everything you can about them.  (Meaning:  you must "establish a beachhead" and get to know -- and become known to -- the key decision makers and influencers in that market.) I remember "going after" Snack Foods and Pet Foods as specific marketing campaigns.  
   
2. SCALE:  Once you've identified who your target market is, you go after virtually every key decision maker you can locate, and you campaign them to fill your funnel.  Going after snack food manufacturers, we must have sent out portfolio packages to hundreds of executives at dozens of companies... and then John, my boss, would set in-person sales calls to pitch services.  That usually netted us new business quite reliably.
3. REJECTION:  Part of the reality of the funnel.  Success is targeting as big a group as you can identify of the most logical targets in the market you want to crack, and then you simply work the funnel -- and you never take it personally when rejection comes.  Not everyone will love you, as any politician will tell you! Ultimately, getting a lot of rejections quickly is a GOOD thing, because it gives you feedback, and helps you go back to #1 and continue to focus...