It’s Sunday morning and while I was watching the early morning football matchups on the NFL channel I began thinking “why did I love football” so much? It’s not like I ever had a shot to get on the High School football team even though I tried, let alone a college or the NFL team. In High School I was fearless and ferociously competitive but I just couldn’t escape the fact that I was only 5’ 2” and weighed 125 lbs. at the time.

Was it because that wonderful feeling I would get when my father would play catch with me in the back yard as a little lad. Or maybe it was all those pickup games that I would play in the neighborhood where all you buddy’s would line up and the two best players would be captains. They would alternate selections on that draft day that would make up the two teams; Shirts vs. Skins (I used to hate to be picked last which was rare but I never went in the first round either).

Maybe it was the shocking effect I would get when my mother and father would be watching the Washington Redskins play away games on Sunday and my mother would scream at the TV yelling at the referees for bad calls or the players for botched plays while my dad would call out penalties before they were announced by the referee.

Some of my greatest football memories where when my parents would take me and my sister to this, like, membership bar on Sundays when the Washington Redskins would be playing at home, Philadelphia or NYC. Where we would then hop on a bus with my parents friends and proceed to the Game. All of the adults would be singing the “Hail to the Redskins” song or would be telling past great play stories and fantasize about the team’s future. The longer the drive the better our team would get. I’m thinking the alcohol might have impacted the facts a little…We did this until I was about 12.

My dad received custody of the season tickets in the divorce so I began going to every home game with him until I was 17. When I was 25 my dad gave me the Season Tickets and I thought I was “The Biggest Fan”. At that time Joe Gibbs was the coach of the Skins and they played at RFK which was a small stadium, certainly by today’s standards. It would only hold around 50 thousand people and the first 50 rows were on a steel platform that would echo this amazingly loud rumbling when everyone would rapidly pound their feet. When you combined that with 50 thousand screaming fans, it was so loud you could hardly hear yourself think. I can only imagine how opposing teams would hate to play there.

A few years back I had to move my mother belongings into storage because she became ill and had to be moved into a nursing home. During the move I discovered a photo of a football team back in 1920. As it turned out my grandfather was the second string Right Guard on the 1920 Semi-pro C.A.C Championship Team in Southern Ohio. WOW! I thought to myself, my grandfather was a part of the creation of a sport that just happened to be Football. This was 5 years before there was a commissioner of football, when only the lineman wore leather helmets and the rules were as loose as Auburn’s coach Gene Chizik. If you have ever seen the movie Leather Heads with George Clooney my grandfather was playing Semi-Pro football 5 years before the era of that movie which makes me wonder how tuff he would have had to have been. I digress.

I can only surmise that my fascination with football is tied to a lifetime of great memories with family and friends as well as being part of a family that contributed to the making of the greatest sport on turf. That last one might be a stretch but this is why I believe I love football.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

If you have a great football story, I would love to hear about it or share this one with a fellow fans of the game. Either way if it’s Sunday and my team is playing I can assure you I will be at home watching the game.

Have a great Football Sunday

In the world of internet marketing where it seems TABOO to say it takes a long time or it can be hard, you just have to love those snafu’s and challenges that just happen, as you try become a successful internet marketer…

For example just yesterday I was working on Pinterest and planned on setting up a new board (which is one of the things you do in Pinterest).
So I set my board up and proceeded to try and upload pictures for a pin post (which is another one of those things you do on Pinterest). For some reason I got this crazy idea to try Picasa.google.com which is an easier way to upload photos to Pinterest (so I was told). So I began to download the Picas site and while it was downloading, a window Popped up and said the path to the Sonic CinePlayer Decoder Pack could not be found (I’m thinkin “what the fu*K is a decoder pack). It was deleted (probably by me). So in a frantic fury I quickly looked the problem up in google. The fix was another download and $14.95. I need to note that I have two monitors so I can keep an eye on one program while I work on another. Well, while I was reading the” how to download the fix” the Picas sight apparently decided it would upload all of the Pictures and jpegs that were in my computer and for a minute I thought, well I just saved $14 bucks until I realized that it was uploading jpegs that were created by my accounting software such as spread sheets, balance sheets, invoices, job costs and then proceeded to my architectural sections, layouts, designs, specifications, symbols and samples ( 21 years of files ) as well as my 200 pictures (which is all I really wanted to upload) with a grand total of over 843,000 pics and jpegs. Needless to say I closed the program after a 2 hour stint and a powerful lesson from Picasa.
After a good night’s sleep and some metal preparation I began to work on my Word-Press sight AKA blog. I was following a step by step video until the gentleman on the video said “just click on the link tab”, and to my surprise there was no link tab in my WordPress. I had no idea where to get a link tab and it’s not like you can just go and buy one. Well after about an hour of trying to figure that problem out I wrote the guy in the video for help (still waiting).

I then moved on-to setting up my “Sign up to my blog form” which is connected cyberly to an auto responder so I can work on building my list. I was following the step by step instructions once again and even though I was using a different auto-responder I was able to figure it out, or so I thought. I discovered though testing that apparently for some unknown reason it will not acknowledge my personal email. This problem mystifies the powers-to-be at the auto-responder site because it works on every other email we tried except my personal email. Can I say another two hours wasted…

I won’t go into the mirage of setbacks, glitches operator error’s that have pop up throughout my internet journey like some sick and twisted video game, but I will say I am really looking forward to the day when I can look back and say “Geeze that wasn’t so hard”

If you have experienced setbacks in your internet journey I would love to hear about them, so feel free to comment. Otherwise Follow me on my journey as I become a master of internet marketing by signing up to my blog (take notice to my handy work “the social buttons”) and social sites.
Have a great day!
Gary

p.s If you liked this article please share, I’m pretty sure the share button works 😉

Marketing used to be about interruption. For example we would be driving to work listening to our favorite song or talk show and then out of nowhere a commercial comes on advertising something you don’t need or want. You just want to go back to what you were listening too…The same holds true for TV… In fact we have become so accustome to interrupt marketing that we have learned to tune this type of marketing out. It seems the more commercials that interrupt our lives the less we pay any attention…I think it’s amazing how we can hear something and not really be hearing anything almost like static fuzz on a TV (boy I just dated myself)… Yet many companies refuse to give into the new methods of marketing. It’s even in our email boxes, textarketing and let’s not even talk about the interruption of the sales call (who thought of this and what was going on in his/her mind?)
The times are changing and you are beginning to see it everywhere. I remember one time several years ago I was buying couch for my home and I wanted a piece of the fabric so I could pear other items in my living room. I had to pay $15.00 bucks for a sample… I recently purchased another couch at the same store and a fabric sample was free, in fact came with it and didn’t even have to ask for it…
We are now in the permission based marketing era… No longer do the old rules have the effect or results they used to. We despise interrupt marketing. If I want to know about a product you better have some information up on the internet so I can do my research. And if you want my real attention tee up a eBook, free trial or even better get to know me and educate me on what products are out there, how they are different and what would be the best buy for me and my needs..
Engagement is the new rule for marketing today. And if you are marketing you better understand your client and where their pain points are. You must be willing to explain their pain in a story that resonates with them and what their life will be like when there pain is gone, and the quickest and easiest way to solve their problem is this crazy product that just happens to be what you’re selling. Everyone wants a story. Stories are shared today if they are good, and sharing is huge in today’s social media world. Marketing success today is reaching someone who is in pain, sharing a story that resonates with them about their pain, providing them with a product that solves their pain and then get them to share their story with their friends. When you do this in the social media world, the opportunities are endless.
Give the house and lease the land.. Giving free trials, samples and test runs are bigger than ever and will continue to grow. We are moving into this world of engagement where stories are shared and teaser products are free, relationships are built and then products are sold.
Understanding the market awareness and the type of persona you are marketing to is a crucial part to the path of a successful marketing campaign. You need to break through the noise and stand out. By understanding the market awareness you can come up with content that is fresh and never heard before which is engaging by its own right. Understanding the persona you are marketing to help you target your campaign with laser accuracy.
I have been researching the new ways of marketing and found the above to be helpful (so says my friends). If you are interested in keeping up with fresh marketing tips and Social Media Engagement based marketing then get on my mailing list so you don’t miss out… Just content no interruption.

If you have experienced setbacks in your internet journey I would love to hear about them, so feel free to comment. Otherwise Follow me on my journey as I become a master of internet marketing by signing up to my blog (take notice to my handy work “the social buttons”) and social sites.
Have a great day!
Gary

p.s If you liked this article please share, I’m pretty sure the share button works 😉

Gary.