A few years ago I moved my family to the Central Coast of California for a job that I took. We lived in a quaint town 10 minutes from the beach. It was amazing! I surfed a ton. But, one of those surf sessions turned into one of the scariest moments of my life.

Darren Rowse of problogger.net issued the 7 Link Challenge a couple of days ago. I thought it was a great idea. So, here we go:

We live in an ever-increasing digital world. We each have the luxury of accessing the world’s information from a computer at home. We can shop from home and have our purchases delivered. We don’t have to walk down the street to get the paper. We don’t have to go to the store. We’re turning into a world of hermits. Yet, this goes against human nature. We crave personal relationships. We crave closeness. We crave trust. We crave closeness. Success in your business will depend greatly on your ability to create personal relationships with your customers, your prospects, even your online friends & followers.

Most people view marketing as an offensive move. And, yes, you need to be on the offensive. But much of marketing is about defense. In the book Good To Great, Jim Collins teaches the Hedgehog Concept. The hedgehog is a fairly unassuming animal and doesn’t have much of an offensive game. But, it does one thing better than just about any animal out there – defense.

As an artist your job is to create. But, it’s time to start getting creative outside of your normal creative world. It’s time for you to start creating your business future. One of the things any good marketer must learn is how to create anticipation. Let me give you a good example from my 3 boys. They’re 10, 8, and 4 years old. If they can do this, so can you.