Some of you might be think­ing, “What in the heck hap­pened to Harkavy?  Is he not the guy who said this social net­work­ing thing was a type of voyeurism?  Did he not say that Face­book was just another way to be stuck in reac­tive mode?  And now look at him — he is on Face­book, he has an iPhone, he Tweets, and now he even has a blog!  He caved!  He sold out!  He is a traitor!“

Yup, I said it all because I truly believed it all.  I was Saul per­se­cut­ing and mock­ing all you Black­berry, iPhone, Twits… I mean Twit­ter­ers.  Then came last month’s Build­ing Cham­pi­ons Expe­ri­ence.  Two things hap­pened to me while I was there that for­ever changed my view on this grow­ing social and tech­no­log­i­cal movement.

The first is that I lis­tened to my friend, pub­lisher and Build­ing Cham­pi­ons client Mike Hyatt, speak to the audi­ence on the power of social net­work­ing.  Mike’s per­sonal blog has more than 60,000 unique vis­i­tors per month and he has more than 40,000 fol­low­ers on Twit­ter.  He started blog­ging long before it was called blog­ging.  The guy knows what he’s talk­ing about.   He has been encour­ag­ing me to enter into this world for quite some time, but at The Expe­ri­ence I think his (and oth­ers’) strong encour­age­ments really struck me.

I felt like I was the only per­son in the audi­ence and that he was speak­ing directly to me, the biggest naysayer.   As he addressed the group, here’s how the con­ver­sa­tion played out in my head:

MIKE:  “Harkavy, isn’t your company’s pur­pose to make a pos­i­tive and last­ing dif­fer­ence in the lives of people?”

ME:  “Yes, of course it is.”

MIKE:  “And do you not see that your coach­ing goes very deep with a select few, and your books go less deep but add value to the masses?”

ME:  “Yes Mike, I do.”

MIKE:  “And do you see how the lessons you have learned over the past 20 plus years as a coach could add value to even more peo­ple if they could just have easy and reg­u­lar access to it?”

ME:  “Yeah Mike, I guess so.”

MIKE:  “Now Daniel, do you see that one of your pri­mary func­tions as a CEO is to net­work?  And that you spend all sorts of time and money doing it in per­son or via phone each and every day, all around the world?”

ME:  “Yes Mike, I do.”

MIKE:  “Then Daniel, if all of this is true, why are you not adding value to the masses while net­work­ing with the world at vir­tu­ally no cost from the com­fort of your home office?”

Okay Mike, I get it!

The sec­ond blind­ing flash came when I met Sebas­t­ian from Ger­many.  He attended our Expe­ri­ence in Sun­river, Ore­gon because he read Mike Hyatt’s blog, though he had never met or talked to Mike.  Mike told his blog fol­low­ers he was com­ing to our Expe­ri­ence, and Sebas­t­ian decided to book his inter­na­tional flight and reg­is­ter for an event being put on by a com­pany he had never heard of!  Because of Mike’s blog we have a new friend and client…and now I have a blog!

The theme for my blog is “proac­tive and inten­tional lead­ing and liv­ing.”  My desire is to share key insights and lessons I have gath­ered dur­ing my years in the coach’s chair.  I have learned so much by coach­ing many of you, and will strive to make this blog about shar­ing spe­cific strate­gies and action plans to help you make the best deci­sions in your busi­ness and life.

Thank you for invest­ing your pre­cious time in read­ing what I have to say.  I hope it helps you to be more proac­tive and intentional.

From this day for­ward I am socially con­verted and attempt­ing to network!

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1. A Tip From a Begin­ning Blogger

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Tags: Blogging, Facebook, Mike Hyatt, Social Networking, Twitter

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 11:01 am and is filed under Communication. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.