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7-Figure Small with Brian Clark
Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer
Copyblogger FM: Content Marketing, Copywriting, Freelance Writing, and Social Media Marketing
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Site Success: Tips for Building Better WordPress Websites
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Technology Translated
The Digital Entrepreneur
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The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience
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Zero to Book
Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer
hosted by Sonia Simone

Leadership, Categories of One, and Purple Rain

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Previous Episode:Make Better Mondays! 6 Minutes to a Happier, More Productive Week More Episodes Next Episode:Things I Love / Things I Hate #3: Nerdy Nummies and Crummy Content

All Episodes:

July 25, 2016

The 2 Points of Clarity that Will Make You So Much More Productive

July 18, 2016

Launching Your First (or Next) Digital Product

July 11, 2016

A Quick, Enjoyable Way to Sharpen your Vision, Goals, and Values

July 4, 2016

Q&A from Twitter, Independence Day Version!

June 27, 2016

The Difference Between Mindset and Wishful Thinking

June 20, 2016

Things I Love / Things I Hate #4: Trade Secrets, Transparency, and Lemonade Stands

June 13, 2016

Should You Swear on Your Blog?

June 7, 2016

Up All Night to Get Lucky: Sonia’s in a New Documentary!

May 23, 2016

The Context of a Successful Content Strategy: The Harpoon and the Net

May 16, 2016

My #1 Time Management Tip: Don’t Multitask; Compartmentalize

May 9, 2016

The 7 ‘Escape Pod’ Principles (Help Me Write My Book!)

May 2, 2016

Things I Love / Things I Hate #3: Nerdy Nummies and Crummy Content

April 25, 2016

Leadership, Categories of One, and Purple Rain

April 18, 2016

Make Better Mondays! 6 Minutes to a Happier, More Productive Week

April 11, 2016

5 Idea-Generating Techniques We Use on the Copyblogger Team

April 4, 2016

Blog or Podcast? 5 Questions to Help You Decide

March 28, 2016

Two EQ Hacks: A Nifty Trick for Making Big Changes, and How to Handle Hurt Feelings

March 21, 2016

Things I Love/Things I Hate about Health & Fitness Marketing

March 14, 2016

A Simple, Powerful Creativity System to Capture and Generate More Ideas

March 7, 2016

Anniversary Edition! On Finding Your Stubbornness and Going the Distance

February 29, 2016

Q&A: Cornerstone Content, Creativity, and the Future of Our Businesses

February 22, 2016

Getting to Freedom and Business Clarity: A Conversation with Sonia Thompson

February 15, 2016

New Mini-Series: Things I Love / Things I Hate

February 8, 2016

Getting Clear on your Metrics and Benchmarks: The 3 Lenses to Look Through

February 1, 2016

The Untethered Society: Scary or Liberating? (Or Both?)

January 25, 2016

Deep Creative Focus, the Long Haul … and, Yes, David Bowie

January 11, 2016

Motivation and Creativity: A Conversation with Mark McGuinness

January 4, 2016

Vision and Goal-Setting for Your Digital Business

December 21, 2015

Encore: How to Avoid Getting Sucker-Punched by Internet ‘Facts’

December 14, 2015

To Craft Content Marketing that Works: Avoid Silly Fads … and Do this Instead

December 7, 2015

How to Work from Home: Getting Stuff Done when No One is Looking Over Your Shoulder

November 30, 2015

5 Work Habit Hacks from 12 Creative Geniuses

November 23, 2015

Encore: Productivity for Flakes, Head Cases, and Other Natural Disasters

November 16, 2015

What You Need to Know about Guest Posting

November 9, 2015

7 Straightforward Steps to Superior Blog Posts and Podcasts

November 2, 2015

Self-Help for Business Owners: Useful or Useless?

October 26, 2015

The 7-Minute Content Makeover

October 19, 2015

7 Commandments of Professionalism for Content Marketers

October 12, 2015

Staying Grounded on the Road to Success: A Conversation with JB Glossinger

October 5, 2015

Minimalism, Success, and How to Be a Big Shot

September 28, 2015

Finding the Balance Between Pragmatism and Your Ideals

September 21, 2015

What Happens at the Crossroads of Content and Social Media

September 14, 2015

But Facebook Doesn’t Work For … (waily waily)

September 7, 2015

Marketing for Writers and Other Creative Souls

September 1, 2015

How to Turn Bad News into Happy Customers

August 25, 2015

How to Avoid Getting Sucker-Punched by Internet ‘Facts’

August 18, 2015

Bringing More Emotion into Your Writing — From the Inside Out

August 11, 2015

A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Rainmaker.FM Digital Business Podcast Network

August 4, 2015

My Favorite Tools of the Trade for Writing, Content Planning, and Creative Collaboration

July 28, 2015

How Long Will It Take for My Business to Start Making Money? And Other Impossible Questions

July 21, 2015

5 Things I Learned from Minecraft about Community, Ecosystems, and Business

July 14, 2015

Call to Action: The Awesome Power of Asking for What You Want

July 7, 2015

A Question of (Writing) Voice: How to Strengthen It, How to Shape It

June 30, 2015

Deviance, Obsession, and Sharing Your Gifts with the World: A Conversation with Bill O’Hanlon

June 23, 2015

Is Hypersensitivity the New Fascism?

June 16, 2015

Q&A: Duplicate Content Worries, and Other Questions from the Audience

June 9, 2015

Business and Marketing for Artists and Creative Workers, Part Two

June 2, 2015

Business and Marketing for Artists and Creative Workers, Part One

May 27, 2015

The 3 Types of Trolls You Meet Online (and How to Deal with Them)

May 19, 2015

The 7 Circles of Belief that Drive Customers to Your Business

May 12, 2015

The Difference Between B2B and B2C Marketing (and Other Questions)

May 5, 2015

Annie Pratt on Resilient Leadership: How to Build a Smart, Agile Business by Crafting an Incredible Team

April 28, 2015

How Not to Be a Dirty, Rotten Spammer

April 21, 2015

4 Deep Marketing Questions (with Answers!)

April 14, 2015

How to Uncover What Your Audience Wants to Buy: An Interview with Ryan Levesque

April 7, 2015

Productivity for Flakes, Head Cases, and Other Natural Disasters

March 31, 2015

8 Harsh Truths about Social Media (and 1 Pretty Awesome One)

March 24, 2015

3 Juicy Marketing Questions Answered

March 17, 2015

How to Strengthen Your Talents

March 3, 2015

The Lies We Tell Ourselves About Business, Part 2

March 2, 2015

The Lies We Tell Ourselves About Business, Part 1

April 25, 2016

Leadership, Categories of One, and Purple Rain

Real leadership starts when you step up with the courage to be a category of one.

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I have a short episode for you this week, honoring the life of Prince and opening up some ideas about leadership, about community, and about building something that matters.

  • Corporate culture (and what to do if you’re stuck in Attack of the Clones)
  • Finding the value in what you do and what you can offer
  • Wrangling the “I’m not talented enough” monster
  • Thoughts on technical excellence and love

If I approached something with that much commitment and passion, what could I become?

Listen to Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer below ...

Leadership, Categories of One, and Purple RainSonia Simone
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The Show Notes

  • An epic video of James Brown, Michael Jackson, and Prince onstage together — go view it now, before it gets taken down in the YouTube shuffle
  • A great piece on Prince’s NFL Halftime show, inspiring plus just some great music to listen to.
  • I always love hearing from you and connecting over on Twitter @soniasimone

The Transcript

Sonia Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital.

I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should.

I had a whole episode ready to record for you, and then Prince died, so I wanted to talk about some thoughts that brought up in me, and see if they resonate with you.

This one will be short, because I just want to give you some food for thought and then send you out on your week to go do something that matters to you.

This is an interesting century

This century really does fascinate me, because it’s the century of claiming our own thing. We’ve seen some massive changes globally in terms of rights for people of every sexual orientation. Still people who are not free, but if you compare the situation to ten years ago, which is a historical millisecond, it’s startling.

Still work to be done. There are certainly still countries where being out about your sexual orientation is a death sentence for some. Still people who are being devalued for culture or skin color or religion they grew up with or whatever it may be. So I’m not saying it’s utopia. But I do see a lot of movement and a lot of possibilities.

Defining ourselves, defining our communities

A lot of you know that I spent a significant chunk of time in a normal corporate job. I wasn’t particularly well suited to it — I was good at the work, I wasn’t so good at the culture.

I’m an inconvenient person. The words “problem child” come to mind. My brain is weird and I have a tendency to throw a lot of, “Why couldn’t we do this” into the mix. When I work on something, I think about it pretty much all the time.

The bigger the organization, the harder it is to work with that, because there are processes and established ways of doing things, and you can’t just reinvent something every five minutes.

I do a lot better in a small organization.

The traditional corporate culture, which was invented in the 20th century, was about playing a particular part. You had to look a certain way, dress a certain way, behave a certain way. The show Mad Men, even though it was about the advertising industry which had more leeway, showed this really well, I thought.

For all kinds of reasons, the culture is moving away from that, “play the part of the perfect corporate clone.” There are still lots of clone-filled workplaces, but now there are more companies that realize the kind of talent you can attract if you encourage people to bring their true selves to work.

But even if you’re stuck deep in Attack of the Clones, you can step out and make something more real. It might not be a business today. It might be an audience today. It might be a blog paired with a strong social media presence that starts to build your tribe.

Suigeneris

Invent yourself. Be a category of one.

Step up

We’re so hard wired to want to be valuable, to contribute meaningfully to our community. To bring something to the group and be valued for that. If you aren’t finding it 9 to 5, get out and make it in another space.

You’re good at something. The thing you’re good at might bring a lot of value to someone else. And in fact, it might be the seed of an amazing community that values what you value.

I think we get very tied up in “what we’re not good at.” Maybe you’re not good at selling, or managing, or you have the tiniest sliver of free time, or whatever it may be.

First, we get good at things with practice. And with a lot of things, you can even practice mentally. If you suck at selling, try listening to marketing podcasts on your commute and making notes on your phone. Take advantage of the little slivers of time.

Most people who have a computer have bits of free time we don’t notice because we let them slip away on Facebook or Instagram. If you do any social media or watch any television, you have some time.

Small pieces of time, applied to a problem daily, can create real results. The trick is to get the flywheel moving in the right direction — at a certain point, the momentum will start to give you a major assist.

Prince had an enduring legacy because a) he worked his ass off to become incredibly gifted at his craft, b) he defined himself, he didn’t let anyone else define him, and c) he got in the game. He didn’t stay in his room playing guitar, he stepped forward and shared what he had with others. He was recording demos when he was just 17. He actually wrote his first song when he was 7.

If Prince’s death moved you, or his life moved you, or anyone out there in life is speaking to your heart, get with it. Go do it. Life is sometimes very short, but we can do something epic while we’re here.

I’ll leave you with a fantastic video I found of James Brown jamming with Michael Jackson and with Prince. All three of them are showing up with so much love and also so much technical excellence, which is born of love. Don’t look at this and say, “I’m not that talented, I could never do that” — look at it and ask yourself:

If I approached something with that much commitment and passion, what could I become?

Take care, all, and see you next week with something a little more “strategic.”

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