How blogging for 30 days in a row leads to international acclaim

360 Convos rocketed into the international scene with a featured
post on Renbor Sales Solutions' blog, a Toronto, Canada Corp.

When I embarked on my 30 Days of Consecutive Blog Posts I had no idea where I would end up. The disciplined effort to blog everyday led to local, national, and even international attention. One of the places I landed was Toronto, Canada as a featured contributor on The Pipeline, the blog of Renbor Sales Solutions, Inc.

Thank you Tibor Shanto.

People south of Canada tuned in, too. In the last two weeks alone, I received pageviews from 33 of the 50 United States: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, Wyoming, New York.

Do it. Figure out which ones are missing :-)

During that same time, 360 Convos also pulled in viewers from around the world including: Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, France, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Ireland, Lebanon, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.

Some of the posts took on a life of their own and appeared in other places . . .

Dining for Women, a national giving circle empowering women in the developing world, featured the blog post: Can a good dinner change the world?

The City of Gresham picked up a post on customer service for their intranet site, which gave me the opportunity to create the post: City shares good ideas (mine).

The Customer Collective, an “editorially independent, moderated blogging community for elite sales and marketing executives,” featured four posts:

1. Interupted Internet Access Causes Depression
2. Confessions of a Social Media Strategist [A LinkedIn Nightmare?]
3. The Genius of Google +1 vs Retweeting: Casting Your Online Vote
4. Google Analytics Confirm Declines in Website Visits

Porter Anderson, a former CNN journalist, shared his laptop power with me at a Writers Conference, tweeted and emailed a link to 800 other attendees of  Words Motivate.

BlogHer.com, which boasts a following of 23 million women, featured a post I wrote on a visit to the Clark County Fair, Families Disrupted by Technology.

Canadian Sales Trainer Tibor Shanto, a favorite Twitter friend @Renbor, featured one of my posts on his blog: When the customer can't be consoled...

TOP 25. The lovely Paula G, career editor for BlogHer, promoted 360 Convos as one of the 25 Career and Business Women Bloggers Worth Reading.

Today, marks the 38th consecutive post. Don't ask me if I'll keep going. I'm still deciding.

In the meantime, I'd like to quote another Twitter friend, Jeremiah Owyang. He summed up a mutual experience on his blog when he wrote, “Even the smallest thing will lead to something bigger.”

Blogging creates its own form of energy and sends you places you hadn't imagined.

Where has your blog taken you??

38 CONSECUTIVE POST

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If you'd like to read the other posts in the blogging series, try these:

1.

What I learned from Jeremiah Owyang
that allowed me to take down Google*
*Almost

2.

Tips for blogging everyday

3.

Great is the enemy of good and other
things I learned from blogging

4.

How blogging is like throwing stones

5.

How blogging for 30 days in a row
leads to international acclaim

Who rescues the graduates from failure?

Only 1 in 4 entering high school will graduate, began the NPR audio show. The example they used to illustrate their story on All Things Considered was former gangbanger, Patrick Lundvick. He's a dropout. He hustled drugs. He ended up in jail.

Today, he isn't willing to completely give up the drug-world friends of his old life, but he is willing to chase a new life that includes a job.

On the drive home from the office, the interview played in the background as I mentally reviewed the day. I caught snippets of it -- it detailed the stats for drop outs, half are black, most end up unemployed, unemployment crises leads to jail time. When the show introduced Alternative Schools Network, a Chicago-based recovery program to get drop-outs back on track, my attention perked up.

Whose creating programs in my own community to help dropouts, I wondered. Can they really alter the course of their life?

I was riveted when Lundvick said, "Everyone can change — everyone."

I believe that. I believe even I can change. I watched it happen. I lived it. Lived through it and came out the other side. When I started managing I told my staff, "You can't make a mistake I haven't already made." For the newbies I would add, "If you make a mistake, no one dies. It's not the end of the world. Learn from it and move forward."

"Everyone can change — everyone." Patrick Lundvick

As I continued the drive home I wondered how many managers make it, 3 out of 4? Half? Or are the stats closer to the 4 million students starting ninth grade this fall from which 1 million will eventually graduate?

I considered the challenges of changing, how difficult it is when given the same scenery day after day. We have to give up something to change, the status quo, the 'bad known,' preconceived beliefs, friends who have undue influence over us and even the job itself. At one job, I went from the backseat complainer and criticizer to the pro-active employee that said if it needs to be done, I'll do it. I stopped picking up the banner for everyone else's cause. It wasn't easy. Even Patrick Lundvick was having trouble separating his drug life from the one he wants.

During the course of the interview Lundvick stated, "I can't say I will not hang out with the people I know, 'cause some of the people that are in that life, have saved my life."

It's hard to disengage when the connections go deep. I considered the strength of character it would take to rub shoulders with friends closing $75K cocaine deals while you dog a job at Kinkos. It's all about choices and where you want to end up.

I wondered who rescues graduates who get jobs, but who drop out mentality or emotionally, for any number of reasons. Who reaches out to managers who let them fall through the cracks? A recent e-newsletter from Tibor Shanto said, "Many get into a routine, one that perhaps delivered some level of success for some time, and they stick with it, no matter what is going on in their world." It seems like we could all use a wake up call. A gentle nudge to look at the world from where we want to end up, not where we've been, or who we've been.

All of us could use better job skills. And maybe a rescue. Who pushed your career the right direction?

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RESOURCES
NPR.org | School's Out: America's Dropout Crisis, quote at 3:35 in audio
The Pipeline | Removing The Barrier From Sales – Sales eXchange – 107

Consequences of Dropping Out of School | Press Release (PDF);
Executive Summary (PDF); Report (PDF).