My Birthday Wishes For You

Today is my 40th birthday.

I know the traditional approach is for you to wish me good will and so forth.

But since I’m not a traditional guy I thought I’d turn that around.

I thought I’d send you my wishes.

Here they are:

Small business owners: Trust yourself. Then stick with your plan. I see you all too often coming up with a good idea only to sabotage it 3 months later. One of your strengths is that you take action. But one of your weaknesses is you sometimes take opposite action. Make your plan and work your plan.
Big businesses: Remember how you got to where you are today. The bigger you get the more conservative you get. But that’s not why you were great years ago. You started as an innovator, as a risk taker. Find that spirit again. Build risk and innovation into your culture. I’m not telling you to do this because I think it will be a fun little project. I’m telling you this because being big isn’t enough any more. Everybody is vulnerable. The companies standing still are the easiest ones to get shot.
Web marketers: Get out of your circle. Stop going to your own industry shows. Start going to your clients’ shows. You can’t sell anything to Rand Fishkin, Lee Odden or Danny Sullivan. You also have nothing particularly interesting to offer them. You have a ton to offer to your clients’ industry shows.
Colleges and Universities: Figure out how you are going to build current business practices into your curriculum. Mashable had a great article: Why Colleges Need to Better Prepare IT Grads. I just wrote a piece on Internet Marketing In Our Colleges. By not aggressively dealing with this glaring issue you are not being of service to your students. You are also jeopardizing your relevance. There are an increasing number of thought leaders advocating for skipping the college route altogether.
Burger King: My kid loves you so I’ve been spending a lot of time at your stores. You guys are getting really slow. I’m not sure why this is. It does seem like your people hate their lives a little more than the people working at McDonald’s. Your burgers and onion rings are awesome. Please don’t fall into obscurity just because of a lack of culture. If I was out of work I’d come work at one of your stores. But I’m a little tied up right now.
Netflix: You are in a real pickle… all of your own doing. I don’t have any advice for you except maybe wake up next Monday morning and pretend the last 6 months never happened.
Google: I wish you hadn’t merged my Google Apps with my Gmail. It makes using you on my phone much more complicated than it used to. But otherwise please just keep being you. You are a beacon light of hope for how all businesses should be run.
Bing: Keep pushing for awesome. The news is constantly filled with Facebook news and Google news. You need to be in there too. You’ve got unique strengths that neither of those 2 companies have. Please keep the innovation train ramped up.
Yahoo: Here’s your golden opportunity. Carol is gone. What are you going to do? You have an amazing opportunity. Please take it!
Meg Whitman: Please make HP great again. It was once one of the great American companies. It’s not any more. I think you have it in you to bring back the greatness.

OK. That was loads of fun.

In my next decade I hope all of us have a little more peace, happiness and fun.

This post was written by

Sage Lewis – who has written 333 posts on SageRock Digital Marketing Blog.
My name is Sage Frederick Lewis. My kid's name is Indiana Sage Lewis. I am filled with love and passion for many things in life. The list of things I like about life is MUCH longer than the things I don't like about life. So, since you don't have all day reading about the mundane things I love (some of which, btw, include: Rocky, Indy, SageRock, movies, pizza, cheesecake, running, exploring.) here are the things I don't like: Driving Meetings Zucchini (I like it fine. I'm just allergic.) I think that's pretty much it. My Twitter account is: http://twitter.com/sagerock My YouTube Channel is: http://www.youtube.com/sagerock