In my career both as an in-house designer and as an entrepreneur I’ve been given the opportunity to design a variety of things. From brochures to building signs, it seems like I’ve done close to all of it. One of my favorite things to design is an email.

Many people say that email marketing is a dead medium. Try telling that to my clients for whom I design more emails than you probably get in your inbox. Not only is it still alive, it’s thriving. Recently my favorite email marketing provider, Mailchimp, had their one millionth user.

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Kristen, Adam, and "Great"

Last week I had the pleasure of visiting my family in Indiana. It was a big deal as I had not seen most of them for close to ten years and nobody on that side of my family had even met my wife.

The greatest part of the trip was spending time with my 96 year old Great Grandmother. “Great,” as we call her, has always been a part of my life and I have fond memories of staying at her house as a child.

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Recently I set out to run eleven miles. It was my longest distance yet. It started out like a typical run but around mile five a bone in my foot shifted causing me a lot of pain. With each step the pain increased and it wasn’t long before I was running with a limp.

When this happens, you start looking at the situation in terms of risk vs. reward. You try to figure out if hitting your goal today will hurt you so much that next time you’ll be sitting on the couch instead of running. Consistency is everything and it’s better to do less and be able to do it again in a couple days than go all out and be immobile for the next few weeks.

Experience taught me that this injury, worst case, would knock me out for a week. I knew my training and travel schedule and thought that I could handle a week off so I went for it. But man was it going to hurt.

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Anyone close to me knows that I value action. I crave it. In fact, you can drop me in the middle of any fiasco your business might be enduring and, if there are clear steps to take, I’m calm – free from worry. But if we don’t know what to do next or can’t move forward that’s when I start to freak out a bit.

I first discovered this little phenomenon in myself about 6 years ago when I realized that I never panicked in traffic as long as the traffic was moving. If we were bumper to bumper but we were in motion, I was fine. It was only if every lane was completely stopped and we could not move that I would start to become anxious.

There are many examples in my life where this is true. Why? I need to be in motion. I need progress. I need action.

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There is great quote from Thomas Edison that many entrepreneurs use as comfort during troubling times.

I haven`t failed, I’ve found 10,000 ways that didn’t work.

I think this is very true and it is a positive way to look at the ups and downs of our businesses.

I try to take this a bit further and apply it to my ‘internal self.’ By that I mean what about ME doesn’t work and what is needed to make ME work better? As the leader in your organization your internal health, feelings, intelligence (pretty much everything) effects the growth and culture of the entire place. Having a well-trained sense of self-awareness can go a long way toward making your organization run the way you want it to.

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If you’ve been following me on Twitter or are a friend on Facebook then you have probably heard a couple things here and there regarding a new non-profit that I’m starting.

I thought I would take a little time to tell you more about our exciting news and give you a bit of insight as to why I’m embarking on this new adventure.

To start, Givebag.org is a non-profit organization that provides small, pre-packaged meals to homeless men, women and children throughout the US.

Each bag is biodegradable and contains various food items donated by our generous supply partners. These bagged meals are available at no cost to the person giving them out, as our goal is to make it easy for you to help someone in need.

Yes, you read that correctly. It is free to receive these bags but it is also free to give them out. It costs you nothing. Nada. No sacrifice on your part whatsoever.

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I’m very competitive. Always have been. Interestingly though I’ve always been more competitive with myself than with other people. Sure there are people I focus my competitive gaze on from time to time but it’s always been “me” that has pushed “me” to get better. Maybe I’m too self-involved; who knows. We won’t get in to that.

I think businesses focus too much on their competition. Sure, a little competitive keyword research never harmed anyone – not too much anyway. But where do we draw the line between learning from our competition in order to benefit our business  and distracting ourselves from what is most important? When does it go from self-help to self-destruction?

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Over the course of this series we’ve found a way to narrow down that massive to-do list into some actionable items that just might help you to get things done for a change. We’ve identified the key characteristics of both short and long-term marketing tasks and we should now have an understanding of the 2-1 marketing strategy and why it can be effective.

Below is a list of common marketing tasks that may be on your list. Please note that this is not, in any way, a comprehensive list. However these examples combined with your understanding of the short and long-term should lead you down the right path. If I’ve missed some very important tasks in my examples please feel free to leave them in the comments. I’d love to hear what you have to say.

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