Our agency in South Florida

Most people thought I was out of my mind to leave the security of a great job (with a son to support and parents in need), but I went with my feeling anyway. Besides I did think that someone “upstairs” was watching over me and telling me to take a chance. In order to win BIG, you have to risk BIG. Walking away from that fancy corporate job was the best decision I’ve ever made.

Dianna Huff, my dear Twitter friend, contacted me recently to tell me she was compiling an e-book featuring 23 stories of women (including me) who have gone after their dreams. The book was created to inspire women to overcome obstacles and fears in order to live their best lives.

This book will inspire you!

These extraordinary women are from all walks of life including accomplished entrepreneurs to a triathlon participant who experienced a debilitating accident. The commonality among these women is that they said “Yes” to dreaming big.

All of the proceeds from her book will be donated to the Girls Fight Back foundation. GFB provides personal safety and self-protection education to women and girls across the world.

Please support my friend Dianna and the Girls Fight Back foundation. To purchase the book, please visit her site: profitablefemaleconsultant.com

It will be the beginning of good karma for you too, as this has been a labor of love. To learn more about the extraordinary women featured in this book, please visit them on their websites linked below:

When I was a kid, my Mom bought me a diary with a small brass key. I wrote in it every day until my sister peeked into it and that was the end of my diary writing, especially when she found out I had a crush on her boyfriend. He was a dork.

I’d forgotten all that until people in the business started insisting that I do a blog. “It’ll make people like you … ” “You can show how smart you are…” yada yada.

So, I set up joyofdirectmarketing.com to write about our clients’ direct marketing efforts, as well as my speeches and books. Then my assistant at the time said that no one does direct marketing any more (as in direct mail – boy was she wrong). That threw a wrench into things for a while.

Then someone else here at the office wondered about the objective of the blog and if I was going to build continuity, progress constantly and develop content. Hmmm. This was becoming too much like work, not at all like my diary days when it was fun.

Then my friend, Amy Africa blogged that somehow my blog is stiff and not like me at all. No trolls and such. You can read about it here: Amy Africa’s QLOG

People responded to Amy (as they always do) with ideas for improving content, type fonts, email capture, colors, adding a photo of me and everyone said to lose the calendar. (God knows where that came from anyway).
So, I figured I should check out some other blogs.

Amy’s good friend, Debra Ellis, has an interesting one here: Wilson Ellis Consulting Blog (I adore her from Twitter.)

I attend #blogchat on Twitter most Sunday nights about 8pm, and Mack Collier runs this information-packed session (you need to be on tweetdeck though), and I like his blog: Mack Collier’s Blog

I now read Dianna Huff’s b-to-b blog all the time: Dianna Huff’s Blog

And for fun, I follow the Brazen Careerist, Penelope Trunk – a city person marrying a farmer who has somehow got me engaged in her whole life, like a soap opera. Take a look at it: Penelope Trunk’s Blog

My friend Dwain told me about the blog: Small Dead Animals. Take a look at it here, and you’ll be hooked: SmallDeadAnimals.com

As I’m checking them all out, I’m wondering more and more why I need a blog, what it’s good for. I still have no idea.

If you get a chance, let me know what you think! Thank you.

I’ve worked so hard for that money too, often holding two or three jobs: my daytime job as head of my marketing agency, my passion job of teaching people about marketing, and my other job…writing about marketing. Come to think of it, I’ve probably been a marketing bore. But, I made that money off the sweat of my brow, and now it is gone, Kaput!

So now where do I find the joy?

Well, I find my real joy in my friends, Andrea Nierenberg, Pepper Huff, Donald Sexauer, Mike McCormick, the funny Amy Africa and a host of others. Here are some of them:

Andrea and I going to dinner in Aventura.

Donald and Pepper at the Pepper Mill

Then, of course, I have my family (small as it is now)..my coursin Barry, his wife Fran, Lizzie and Scott, Judy and Mitch and their kids. For all of you who know my great sadness, my cousins are life savers for me. We check in, care about each other and giggle about family stories. They give me joy.

Morty is on the left, and the elusive Lucy is ready to run.

There are also my pets. There’s the great old fat cat Mortimer and Baby Lucy (we call her the phantom of the apartment). No one sees here unless she wishes to be seen. At night, when I’m stressed, I play “rub a tummy with her”, and all is right with the world.

I also enjoy where I’m living now, right smack dab on the water in S. Florida. I look out at the ocean, and remember what it felt like as a child walking to the boardwalk in Long Beach. It is beautiful and the sun shines here all the time. I don’t miss all my years in New York City, as I was always freezing there and cocooning in my apartment. Here, I get outside alot, and have good friends and neighbors in the building. I like the feeling of community.

And, then of course, there’s my work. My parents were always feeling sorry for me, because I had to work so hard. First, it was to support my family, then as a single mother, and then supporting my parents. My Dad was always so sad that I wasn’t like the other women who just got married, and went to the club for lunches and shopping and had time for days at the beauty parlor.

My Dad or Mom never understood that I needed my work, more than they needed the money I earned. On the days that I was home with the flu, I was miserable. I love what I do. We have wonderful clients here at my agency and they are my personal friends. They’re smart and every day they challenge me to do something great or interesting or just fun for their customers.

And, I get a chance ot speak at conventions and conferences and meet new people all the time. It is a great privilege for me to teach people all the wonderful things I’ve learned about marketing. In fact, I think maybe I was born with ADD, and no one diagnosed it, and if I’d had any other kind of work…I’d have been bored.

So, don’t get me wrong. I hate this market dropping, and the economy tanking and people losing their jobs.

I just think that when I look around me, I have great joy. I love our country, our optimism, our freedoms and the wonderful life I have here.I believe that God will help us through our problems.

Of course, I love the great Joy of Marketing too.

Well, one of my friends said “just fake it until you make it”. Another friend said that you need to think of the alternative, and figure ” … well I’m alive.”

When I was very young my Mom took me to the Marble Collegiate Church in New York City and we heard Norman Vincent Peale talk about the Power of Positive Thinking. We knew that it worked, even before Rhonda Byrne The Secret.

Then this week I read in the New York Post about the fact that happiness is contagious. When you interact with a happy person, it increases the likelihood that you are happy by 15% (according to The British Medical Journal).

So the more happy people you know, the higher the likelihood that you’ll be happy too. The study from Harvard Medical School used 4700 people and the findings said that happiness is more contagious than unhappiness.

I have to be happy each day because I have a great guy who works with me, and he’s always upbeat and has a smile on his face. His name is Pepper Huff, and even if our business should get slow he’ll always put a smile on my face. He adds energy to our office.

So, get rid of the sourpusses in your life, and get together with positive folks. The economy? It will take care of itself, either way.