It’s your 21st century education.

Fact: You guys collectively make me smarter. You’re my crazy think tank / insights generator. So… thank you.

— Olivier Blanchard (@thebrandbuilder) January 27, 2012

Several things of note:

1. Sorry for all the background noise. It was loud in City Coffee, and since I was a little self-conscious about doing a video, I didn’t speak loud enough.

2. Sorry for the up close shot. I suppose my forehead IS that big.

I am celebrating two anniversaries today – one traditional, and one less so. I started at Falk Harrison one year ago today. Thank you for keeping me on board for an entire year! I am so happy to be here and hope to get even more done in year two.

And thank you to David Siteman Garland, otherwise known as The Rise To The Top. Two years ago today, I met David for coffee, and he said something to me that changed the direction of my career. We were talking about social media, thought leadership, his career, etc., and I expressed a hesitance to offer my advice and expertise on the subject of social media. I was still a CPA at the time, living in secret at my old CFO job. I told him that I didn’t feel qualified to offer advice, because I had not accomplished anything yet – had not “hit the big time” or whatever. Because of that, I wondered why anyone would listen to me. David said, “Chris, who cares? You know your business, you know about social, so there’s no time like the present. Start sharing now. People will want to hear from you.”

From that moment on, I thought of myself in a different way. He convinced me that there was no perfect point in the future, with “X” amount of success achieved, to begin blogging and giving speeches and offering advice. Since then I’ve done almost 200 blog posts and have not looked back.

David, thank you for the advice. And Falk Harrison, thank you for the job.

P.S. The video below was shot exactly one year ago. I looked a bit different back then!

It sucks that I am still able to write a blog post like this in 2012! Here’s some recent social media engagement from Vinos Finos Cafe in Raleigh, NC:

After @Nick314 brought this to my attention, we tweeted back and forth a bit about it, including a few others in our conversation. Scott Stratten (@Unmarketing) called it a train wreck and a perfect example of how not to tweet. After this discussion, in which Vinos Finos Cafe was included, and in which we were kind but direct as to how we felt about their inappropriate social media effort, I received this tweet from Vinos:

And you can see I responded. Will it ever end?

No offense to this fine man, but what in the world am I looking at here?

Here’s video from my 12.3.11 appearance on KSDK Newschannel 5. Kelly Jackson is awesome – she really set my mind at ease. I hope to be asked back.

Link to the story on KSDK here

(Very sorry this video starts playing automatically. I can’t seem to stop it from doing that)

My employer Falk Harrison and I made this video that discusses the challenges companies face in transitioning time and effort to social media. Matt Bell did a very nice job with the cinematography. It’s amazing what a video starts to look like when you put the Flip Cam down.