Two great reasons this phrase is so powerful: 1) it wields the power to inspire, and 2) it suggests all humans are equal.

The quote embodies balance. It incenses people if a larger perspective is not present, but compliments if one is. It purports that given the same input parameters of life, all thoughts will revolve around the same ideas. Of course, not all thoughts will, and anyone inspired to rebel against the phrase may possess the ire to prove it incorrect (or at least give it a hard-working try) and inspire others.

It also speaks to our equality as human beings and our realistic relationship with the earth. We are the earth, or rather part of its living matter, and we will inherently be so as long as the earth lives. Any other significance in our lives, such as hierarchy, wealth, sisterhood, place, and so on is based on ideas we make up through thoughts.

I often wonder how elements not under the sun, such as those inside or above it, might effect those open to such an idea. It seems unlikely that physical matter both inside and outside the sun reside ‘under the sun’.

It seems as if the rationale for a rocket-speed fast lane life is that one can fit more into the limited time we have, yet that is arguably impossible. Enjoyment is enjoyment. More or less of it in a 24-hour period generally provides the exact same amount of satisfaction.

Listening to Justin Bieber 800% slower is one of the more relaxing music experiences I’ve had since Moby’s last track on ‘Play,’ a similarly pleasing piece of ear candy titled, ‘My Weakness.’

Doing virtually everything faster can lead to only larger divisions between what we want and what we need, which in turn leads to a lower quality life — shorter attention spans, greater distraction, shorter amounts of free time, smaller levels of satisfaction, worse health, less time to reflect and learn, decisions made under duress, more danger, less sleep, less happiness.

A focus on moving slower allows for greater quality in nearly every respect. Quality of work, quality of life, quality time, well-informed decisions, greater satisfaction, time to reflect and learn, more sleep, better health, more security, more happiness.

Perhaps our weakness is our focus on speed – as in the tortoise and the hare.

Would an 800% slower business be any less successful than one moving at lightspeed? It depends on your vision of success.

FedEx probably ought to stick with the hi-speed thing, but if your business model does not include ‘superfast’ maybe you ought to try slowing down a bit. Reflecting on what works can provide fuel for greater effectiveness, enjoyment and success, but only if you slow down to look at it. Maybe not 800%, but make it significant so you can feel the difference.

The shot of the rider making his way through and then emerging from the stone tunnel made my heart soar. Riding the bike, and climbing in particular, is the best feeling I have ever experienced.

I’ve done a lot of work in the cycling community, for bicycle manufacturers, component companies, advocacy organizations, and more. The bicycle industry always has a tight-knit feeling. I frequently meet people in it who barely eek out a living, but they keep doing it because they truly love the sport and want to help people get involved with it. Many industries can be like this, but aren’t.

How are you applying your most joyful passion to your work?

Big is your dream or vision.

Big is unconcerned with size.

Big is branding with integrity.

Big is your passion.

Big is marketing with honesty.

Possibilities are big.

Creating is big.

Thinking is big.

Acting is the bigger next step.

What are you dreaming/creating/thinking/doing?

Eliminating gluten from my diet has resulted in weight loss, better breathing, better digestion, clearer skin, and a significant hike in energy. My prescription drug needs reduced as a result too, saving money.

I’m not a wheat or gluten expert, so this post is written solely from personal experience, but that experience has been profound. I’m writing this so that it might inspire some of you to investigate the underlying causes of some of your health issues.

I’ve been fit most of my life, so I’ve never consciously dieted, however, I have made some big changes over the years in quantity and quality of meals. As a life-long cyclist, I learned to graze throughout the day instead of sitting down for large meals. I find it far more effective to eat about six smaller meals per day instead of the standard three. Large meals tend to make me tired, and cause me to reach for the coffee or tea in order to get through the work day, whereas smaller meals keep me satisfied and energized throughout the day.

The two biggest quality changes I’ve made are the elimination of cereal and gluten from my menu.

Why cereal? I learned a few years ago that ingredients in boxed cereal are processed up to three or more times before they are packaged up. By the time the substances reach you, your body has no idea how to process them effectively, so you’re just eating empty calories, which leaves you hungry and wanting more, while overworking your digestive system. I lost 13 pounds without even trying after eliminating cereal from my diet. A few years later, a friend suggested I eliminate gluten from my diet.

Eliminating gluten was the second big change that made a huge impact on my overall health. My energy level skyrocketed and my digestion dramatically improved. When your digestion is good, virtually everything else improves. I had asthma before I stopped eating gluten; now it’s virtually gone. I used to get a bloated stomach after eating pasta or drinking a beer, but with rice pasta and sorghum beer, I’m happily bloat-free. (I disliked the taste of rice pasta at first, but now I far prefer it.)

(Sorghum beer, by the way, tastes every bit as good as an amber or bitter microbrew. Do I miss a porter or thick stout? Yeah, for sure, but the trade-off is well worth it. There are three sorghum beers available nationwide: New Grist, Bard’s, and Red Bridge (tastes more like a lager). There are also some Belgian gluten-free beers that are super stiff and good for getting tanked if you’re into that, but they’re too strong for my palette. Before I discovered sorghum beer, my stomach would visibly, uncomfortably stretch to epic proportions after a beer, and I felt awful, but sorghum beer goes down just as easily as fruit juice.)

The denial factor with wheat and gluten
When you’ve grown up eating wheat all of your life, the common reaction people have upon trying to eliminate gluten (wheat, oats, barley, rye) is that it’s virtually impossible. Wheat is the core ingredient in bread, pasta, and other regular staples of a human diet. When you start scrutinizing food labels, you find that wheat is in nearly everything. It’s even used as a stabilizing agent in sausage, vegetarian “meat” products, ice cream and ketchup.

So how do you avoid gluten? It’s really pretty simple. All you have to do is weigh the health benefits versus the pain-in-the-tail factor, then stop eating processed foods.

I eat mostly rice, fruits and vegetables. Add in soy yogurt, coconut milk, palm and olive oil, eggs, sunflower butter, and gluten-free bread, and that’s pretty much my daily diet. I can go out to eat, but I just have to be careful to ask about ingredients.

You are not a cow
Do you really need filler in your diet? Wheat is used as a filler agent in a majority of processed and packaged foods. It serves no practical purpose in most food recipes, except to add in some protein (which could easily be sourced from less offensive ingredients), so when I say filler agent, that is quite literally what it is. It fattens you up without providing nutritional value. Cows are fattened up to increase their heft before slaughter. Do you need more heft?

Wheat is a grass, one of the most common human allergens on the planet. So why would you want to eat it? Well, you wouldn’t, unless you were a cow. You’re not a cow are you? (I’ve yet to meet a cow who could read, so I’m guessing not.)

Gluten inhibits effective digestion
Gluten causes the villi in your intestinal tract to get knocked down, so that it lays flat. Why is this a problem? In order for your body to efficiently absorb nutrients, the villi need to be in their natural position, standing up, allowing nutrients to be absorbed and processed.

Wikipedia has this to say about how villi work: In all humans, the villi together increase intestinal absorptive surface area approximately 30-fold and 60-fold, respectively, providing exceptionally efficient absorption of nutrients in the lumen. This increases the surface area so there are more places for food to be absorbed.

The health problems gluten can cause
When the villi lie flat, nutrients cannot be effectively absorbed, which starves your body, resulting in you feeling hungry, which in turn results in you eating more food. It’s a vicious cycle that perpetually overworks your digestive system, resulting in weight gain, poor digestion, bowel issues, breathing problems, skin problems, sleep apnea, inflammation, and joint pain– OH MY! Yes, consumption of gluten truly can cause or be a contributing factor to all of these problems. It can also cause anaphylactic shock if you’re allergic.

Wheat and gluten are allergens
After I had completely eliminated gluten for about a year, I had a wheat-free, but apparently not gluten-free, porter beer one night, and my throat closed, confirming that I am indeed allergic to gluten. Be aware that when you eliminate an allergen from your diet, your sensitivity to it may increase.

To complicate things just a bit, there are different classes of allergies, including wheat allergy, gluten allergy, celiac disease, and others. I first tried eliminating just wheat, and I saw some improvement, but when I completely eliminated gluten, I experienced far more overall health improvement.

I happened to be endowed with a plethora of other food allergies, including all nuts, apple and pear pectin, raw carrots, and tomatoes, so crafting a diet was that much more complicated, but again, the health benefits far outweigh any perceived PITA factor.

Here are some helpful resources for eliminating gluten from your diet:

EatingWell: Should You Go Gluten-Free?

Livestrong: How to Go Gluten Free

EverydayHealth: How to Go Gluten-Free

Wikipedia’s Gluten-Free diet page

GlutenFreeLiving: How To Get Started

eHow: How to Go Gluten-Free on a Budget

GlutenFreeGoddess: Cooking Gluten-Free

Ba de ya – say do you remember
Ba de ya – dancing in September
Ba de ya – never was a cloudy day

The fact that it’s November (not September) wakes me. When I wake, I’m 100% awake immediately. I work at home, and I love my work, so I generally rise, head the twenty or so steps right into the office, and begin working straightaway. Before social media, my work mornings peacefully began with work, email, and more work.

I’m now so connected it makes me dizzy. You too? I write a blog post, and it automagically updates my Twitter account which automaniacally updates my Facebook page and FriendFeed. My RSS feeds and email lists are also updated with the new post, and people write me email to comment or offer their experiences. (I would l-o-v-e it if people would comment right in the comments section below my posts, but they don’t. [Try it, you'll like it!])

So what happens when one of these communication mechanisms fails? Utter chaos.

Someone schedules me for a meeting via some online tool that sends an email in the wee hours of the morning, but the email doesn’t show up. I’m asleep when the meeting is happening, but I don’t know it. The client calls, the rep calls, and I’m dreaming of blissfully sunny skies and raspberry pie so nice, completely unaware of a meeting of great minds and a motivated team. And then the ‘ba de ya’ lyrics…

My point? Oh yes, that. Adding more steps to the prelude to a conversation is an ineffective means of communicating. I’m going to rely less on technology and more on good ole fashioned 1-2-step communication to make sure we continue running a smoothly gliding train.

Facebook messaging is a failure of communication
If you’re relying on me getting an email that’s sent from Facebook to tell me I have a message on Facebook, in which there is a link to a Facebook page that I first must log in to, then read and reply, so you get an email saying there’s a message waiting for you on Facebook, well, that’s setting up a failure of communication. It is literally and needlessly adding at least 3-4 extra steps to the communication process with no overt benefit.

Not intending to pick on Facebook here (well, maybe a little). The fact is that all online tools have a fail ratio. They all fail at some point.

Most of us are equipped with the awesome ability to speak to each other or zip off a quick email. I’m going with those.

If you want to get in touch, email me. If you have an urgent need, call me. I check email three times per day. If you don’t hear back in roughly 24 hours, you can assume that either I’m sick, on vacation, or Cornholio has killed me. I respond to every legitimate email I get, and I love hearing from people. Ba de ya.

The answer was not an easy one because the things I had poured my energies into had largely abandoned me in my time of need. My health, my work, and my home all became endangered in one fell swoop. Then some unsavory, unethical corporations began attacking. (You can read about that if you like over on my branding blog in a post about personal branding.)

This post is a thank you of sorts to all of the people who helped me survive my medical crisis last year. I appreciate their kindness, compassion and encouragement more than I can possibly express.

A couple my clients left, as I guess could be expected (ironically, both were health professionals), but most of my clients stuck with me through it all. I show my appreciation for their loyalty at every opportunity.

The woman who sells the Real Change newspaper outside my local market provided the biggest turnaround in my outlook on life. We had waved hello for three years, but I had never actually met her. Then, one day as I passed by, my flailing health and resultant financial problems written all over my face, she asked me what had me so down. And so began a friendship that I treasure greatly. She openly shared her rich life wisdom, and we laughed together at the joys and absurdities of life. I also rediscovered the fight in me. She reminded me of my Great Aunt’s lesson: “There is not a person, place or thing worth your peace of mind.” Probably the most important thing I found while talking with her was my long lost laugh.

The woman who last April recognized the physical pain I was trying to mask, and recommended the herbal remedy that knocked the knees out from under the virus is someone with whom I now share a pain-related connection. We so appreciate being healthy.

Then there is Suzanne, a woman who attended a branding workshop I put on a couple of years ago. She has extensive experience with foreign dentists, plus she’s a great travel planner. Since I was travel-challenged, she patiently showed me the ropes of travel planning, told me all about her trips, hooked me up with the best dentist I have ever had, and basically held my nervous hand through the trips I took to prevent an impending recurrence of the second health issue. By the end of the second trip, I felt like a capable and happy traveler. She has become a much-appreciated friend for whom I feel occasionally compelled to buy bacon chocolate.

My mom showed an unending patience, and listened for months while I talked my way though the pain day in and day out. The more occupied I was, the faster the time passed, as I thought less about the pain. She even drove up and back 400 miles one day to take care of me. She’s a rockstar mom if ever there was one. My aunt, brother and cousins also checked in on me. I really have an awesome family.

My neighbors and friends gave me rides to the doctor when I was so drugged up on painkillers and other scary medications that I could barely hold myself upright. I stubbornly tried to walk home from one doctor appointment, intent on getting some much-missed exercise, but I felt faint and started stumbling after less than a mile. My friend Jerry dropped what he was doing and picked me up.

My old friend James Mucklestone paid me a visit one day, and actually handed me an unexpected check, which simply blew me away. I hope to repay him with some work now that I am back to full steam again.

My friend Sean called me on a regular basis to check in and make sure I kept enough of a fighting spirit to beat the illnesses.

One of the clients who pushed me towards the path of ruin (by stiffing me for a large sum of moola) stopped by one day to offer me some pain relieving pot. I do not partake of the doobage, so I declined, but I appreciated the gesture nonetheless.

One of my clients took time out of his day to whisk me up to the optometrist office when I needed glasses, after painkillers blurred my vision. Have I mentioned how much my clients rock?

Blessed?
For the first time ever, I felt what some people would call ‘blessed’ to have survived the most physically painful year of my life. In moments when I wonder how I made it through, I think of these people, their efforts, their giving nature, and our friendship.

Every person has the choice of being good or bad, of being underhanded or fighting the good fight. I feel lucky and yes, blessed, to have so many good people in my cheering section.

Hot and cold water
It’s 95 degrees out. Hot food and drink are the last thing on my list of desirable sustenance. I’m pouring ice cold chocolate hemp milk into my coffee solely to bring the temperature down so that it does not heat up my body. And yet, every time I turn on the water at the sink, I turn on the hot water. It’s a bad habit. I keep correcting myself, but not before I feel hotness on hands. It costs money to heat water. Granted, it’s not much, but when you wash your hands as often as do I (yeah, I’m sort of a germ freak), it adds up. I’m teaching myself to turn on the cold water first, but years of badness are hard to undo.

This one isn’t bad, but it illustrates the point well
I eat a lot of soy yogurt. Heaps. I usually buy the 4-serving tubs, but sometimes they are sold out, so I get the 1-serving minis. The tubs come with a re-closeable lid, the minis with a foil peel-away lid. Every single time I get the minis, upon finishing the yogurt, I search the kitchen in vain for the plastic lid so I can recycle it. But there isn’t one, I realize eventually. My mind believes there is a lid because so often there is indeed a lid. I know that I must recycle that lid. Each time the product availability changes, I must change. If I do not change, I waste my effort.

Bad marketing is habit forming
Every week, it seems, I talk with agents and sales professionals who are trying to find easier ways to connect; ways to put less effort into their marketing, and ways to procrastinate from implementing tried and true marketing methods that work.

Procrastinating is habit forming. Bad marketing is habit forming. The more you invest in bad marketing habits, the more your business will flounder, and the more you will ask yourself when will it all turn around? Blaming slow business on the economy is a form of procrastination. Stop blaming and start marketing. When will it turn around?

It will turn around when you turn around.

Turn it around now!
Here’s a simple yet extremely effective exercise. Take a look at your marketing methods. List them out on a sheet of paper (or in Excel if you just can’t bring yourself to use paper and a pen). List out everything you do during your day that could possibly be categorized as marketing, and add it to your list. Now, write the time you are spending on each item on a weekly basis. Next, write the positive outcome in a third column, and finally, write the negative outcomes in a fourth column. It will be very easy to see what is an effective use of your marketing time. This exercise will take you all of about one hour.

I’m going to be totally honest with you here. This exercise might make you feel bad about yourself. It might make you wonder why you’ve been wasting so much time on facebook or twitter. It might show you that your blog posts are ineffective. Or, it may show that all of these are wildly effective. (I hate to say it, but in most cases, they’re not.)

There are some side benefits of this exercise. In addition to giving you a bird’s eye view of your bad marketing habits, you will get a good sense of how much consistent effort you have actually put into each method, and ultimately, how much you are willing to invest in your success. It will tell you if you can effectively manage your own marketing, or if you really need a marketing manager to keep you focused and on task. Finally, it will help you discover your strengths and weaknesses, which can be applied to your personal brand development.

Things can change, but first and foremost you must stab those bad habits in the heart with the sharp end of a highly motivated goal. You can do it. You just have to do a little hard work. Meanwhile, I’ll be hunting around for a nonexistent yogurt top.

The interview went fine, and she seemed nice. I could tell she was firmly planted as a contemporary of the current generation, and it served as a perfect analogy for what I see in marketing nowadays: People lost in a sea of unknown choices, trying to make technology do for them what they could easily do themselves in less time and with greater effectiveness.

When she left, I asked if she needed directions. “Sure,” she said. Nice of her to accept them I guess.

I proceeded to tell her: “Go up the street to the stop sign, take a right, take a left at the signal, then another left at the next signal, and that will take you straight to I-5.” I could have drawn her a map in about ten seconds. They were pretty easy directions, but I could see she didn’t know what to do with them. I asked, “You’re going to use your GPS instead?”

She nodded her head yes, smiling, and walked out the door thanking me for the time. I poured some juice, and looked out the window about five minutes later. She was still sitting in the driveway messing with the GPS with a furrowed brow. She fumbled with getting the GPS to stay on the windshield for a couple minutes, before driving away.

People complain they haven’t enough time today. Today’s new processes take infinitely longer, even for the generation brought up on them, and they are less effective. Let’s take a look at a couple of simple examples of this.

Example #1
Old way of making contact:
1. Look up phone number,
2. Call,
3. Talk.
Conclusion: Pretty darn effective and quick to boot!

New way of making contact:
1. Turn on computer or PDA,
2. Log in to facebook,
3. Login failed,
4. Look up password,
5. Log in to facebook,
6. See if your friend is available for chat,
7. See that your friend is not available for chat,
8. Go to friend’s profile,
9. Mindlessly read their ‘wall’, and learn about Enquirer-like headlines
10. Send message to friend,
11. Wait for reply,
12. Still waiting for reply three hours later,
13. Take a facebook test. And so on.
Conclusion: Oh my. What do we have here? Why it’s a total waste of time and no connection!

Example #2:
Look at facebook ‘fan pages’ if you need another example. If you’re over the age of 30, facebook is not your primary communication tool, and you don’t ‘get it’. If you’ve started up a fan page for your business, you are not marketing. You’re playing. And that’s fine, as long as you’re not expecting a gratifyingly high return on the effort, and you have plenty of spare time in your business schedule for connecting with your friends, because that’s what facebook was designed for. Oh, and you already have enough business too.

What the hell does your business need a fan page for? Businesses don’t need fans. They need customers, plain and simple. Anything else is just playing around. Fan pages are akin to high school popularity contests, complete with cliques (approve your friend as your facebook friend), gossip (read your approved friends’ walls), and scratch fights. Well, maybe not the scratch fights.

I know, I know, updates can go out to your entire fan base with the click of a button. So? How big is your fan base? Is it 100 people? 250? 2000? Unless your fans number about 250,000, you are playing, not working. You can effectively reach infinitely more people with a plethora of other media in a fraction of the time. And remember that time equals money. Your time is valuable. Add it up.

Stop playing if you want your business to succeed. Look for the shorter processes that work instead of the longer ones that just waste time.

Now excuse me while I go try to find my GPS so I can wonder where my cell phone is so I can get that address so I can look it up on the GPS that just fell off the windshield and drive with one device in each hand while steering with my teeth.

You can’t realistically think of your Twitter followers as a known entity. They’re more like magazine subscribers. You likely have little or no idea how many of them comprise those people who are likely to become clients, regular readers, or even legitimate “fans.” In all likelihood, some of your followers are simply collecting followers, with no real intent or purpose.

Lance Armstrong and 50 Cent each have more than 300,000 Twitter followers. In their cases, we can legitimately think of their followers as fans because we already know they have massive amounts of fans, but how many non-celebrity people have that? It’s a fair bet to say that the vast majority of Twitter users do not have a fan base in real life, at least not one that extends beyond their family and friends.

So, what’s the point? The point is that unless you already have celebrity status, a Twitter following is not going to help you build the strongest of quality audiences. Gaining followers on Twitter is popular simply because it requires little effort, but the vast majority of followers you will get are not terribly focused. Here are five better ways to build an audience.

5 Ways to Build A Quality Audience

1. Hands down, the best way to build an audience is with a good old fashioned marketing plan. Marketing is hard work, but it consistently yields positive results, particularly when you surround yourself with a solid plan devised by people who can objectively see what you may not. The first step here is to decide what kind of audience you truly want. Have you ever thought about that? It’s a simple rule: Begin with the end in mind.

2. Do something remarkable, and people will seek you out and follow you. Make your product or service outstanding. Become known for premiere customer service, a la Zappos, or make a name for yourself in any number of unique ways.

3. Look for a large targeted audience, such as you might find in an online or print magazine, then advertise in it. There are thousands from which to choose, with several for nearly any target market. While advertising costs money, there is simply no other way put strong messages in front of a large, captive audience as quickly as you can with advertising.

4. Build or buy a list. Building a quality list takes elbow grease, research, and time. If you are buying a list or lists, you can drill down on very specific characteristics, and it is important to take the time to do just that.

5. Stick to your guns. Once you set a plan, stick to it! Believe in it. Be agile, yet, do not let naysayers deter you from the path you have set for reaching your goals. How many times have you set a plan, followed the first few steps, then let someone steer you off path until you lose focus? Trust your gut, trust the people you work with, and stick to your plan. It’s the resulting consistency that breeds trust and confidence in you and your brand, and leads to a high quality audience, mailing list or customer list.