The World According to Mitch Fanning

Total reading time – 2: 27 seconds

Hey Tim,

I’m responding to the question you posted on Facebook.

“What can I do to make this next book (The 4-Hour Chef) my best book yet? I really don’t want to let you guys down.” [Tim]

First of all, it’s my cheat day so after eating [insert your choice of protein here], legumes, veggies, and salsa for a week I’d rather be stuffing another Oreo in my mouth instead of thinking about the slow-carb diet.  However, since you’ve been so helpful, I’ve decided to slowly put down the Oreo and give you my “two cents.”

Show Me the Variety

Being a slow-carb convert, I desperately want need variety in how my meals “taste.”  Tim, like you, I love salsa. In fact, I’m a sauce prostitute. Unfortunately, after eating salsa for six months straight, I’m about to go *&%! “postal.”  If it wasn’t for cheat days I probably would have already.  I’ve actually been experimenting with a few sauce alternatives but feel they don’t cut it when it comes to helping with fat loss.

Natural Elixirs That Boost Energy and Concentration

I’m a recovering energy drink / caffeine addict. I’ve been experimenting with Yerba mate tea with great success.  Any more ideas I can try?  How about a mixture of Yerba mate with foods that boost energy?

For Slow-Carb Newbies

The biggest myth you need to address is that eating “healthy” is expensive. It’s not. My average meal costs me $1.42 CDN, including cost for supplements and buying groceries for a family of four.

The 80/20

Overall, the above is my uber quick “80/20 analysis” for your new book.  If you focus on giving us slow-carb veterans more ideas on variety and perhaps even a few natural energy boosters, while reinforcing how cheap it really is, you’ll have another winner.

In fact, I’d even buy a copy (as long as I get to contribute a sauce idea or two – kidding, well sort of ☺)

Now, where did I put that *%&# Oreo?

P.S.  Haven’t read Tim’s book The 4-Hour Body?  Follow the link to read the 48 customer reviews on Amazon who gave it an average rating of 4-stars.

Update: Here’s another blogger who got inspired by my idea and wrote their own personal blog post to Tim providing them with some ideas for his next book.  Love it!

Photo credit: Writer’s Block by Drew Coffman

I’ve been dying to share this news for weeks and now that it’s official I can.

Fruition Interactive has been nominated for a Toronto Board of Trade‘s Business of the Year for 2011.

The Toronto Board of Trade Business Excellence Awards honours Toronto businesses that have demonstrated outstanding leadership, growth and innovation in business.

Fruition has been nominated in the “Transition” category, which recognizes a business that has successfully experienced a transformation from a traditional business value or process.

At this point, I think its only fitting to introduce you to Kent Wakely, founder and managing partner of Fruition Interactive (and someone I’m proud to call my colleague and friend), to share his thoughts on being nominated in his own words.

Enter Kent Wakely.

______________________

This nomination is a big deal to us because it reflects and validates the tremendous changes that we’ve made here at Fruition in the past couple of years. It’s happened gradually, so many of our clients haven’t noticed, but looking back it’s quite a change.

In our early days, we were positioned primarily as a technology services company. It took a while, but it finally dawned on us that most of our clients were coming to us not because they felt they needed technology but because they had goals for their business that were going un-met. And 9 times out of 10, that business goal was to generate new leads and sales to grow their businesses.

So, on top of changing how we communicated about our already-successful Web design and development practice, we added some new capabilities towards becoming a full-service Internet marketing company.

We added world-beating Pay-per-Click (PPC) advertising services, fine-tuning and increasing ROI from clients’ Google Adwords, LinkedIn and Facebook advertising campaigns.

We added an innovative package of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services that help to rocket our clients’ sites to the top of relevant search results and generate business-building traffic to their sites.

And we added social media strategy consulting to help retain and engage the leads that clients have worked so hard to get.

But most of all, we’ve taken our own advice. We launched our blog in 2009, and layered on a social media strategy not long afterwords. And we also launched PPC and SEO campaigns to reach new audiences with our message.

And, while we’re content just to see our clients’ satisfaction as they use our help to generate new leads and create new business for themselves, it sure feels great that someone — the Toronto Board of Trade, no less — noticed what we’ve been up to behind the scenes.

______________________

Win, lose, or draw I’m proud to be part of the family at Fruition.

Onward.

Groceries Heather Twining bought for the YWCA Niagara food bank with a $100 in donations.

Earlier this week, I received the following messages from friend and web developer Trevor Twining via my Facebook News Feed:

Simple and to the point, but most importantly, it reminded me that making a difference (and helping others) doesn’t have to be hard work.  It doesn’t have to be time-consuming and you don’t need to be a millionaire philanthropist with your own foundation.

Back to the story…

24 hours later, 7 people (last time I checked) had agreed to make $10-$20 pledges to help the YWCA Niagara with their food bank (including me). Including Trevor’s matching pledges the grand total for the day was $210.

Sending Trevor the pledge was actually the easiest part.  Trevor sent the following message with 3 options for giving your pledge (Paypal, Interac Email money transfer, arranging a “physical” exchange in person):

I chose the “lazy” option, Paypal.

And the point of it all, drum roll please…

The point of this blog post is not to “toot my own horn,” but a gentle reminder (mostly to myself) that doing something good for others takes less time then we often think.  To make a difference, you don’t need to set-up a robust online donation system, spend months planning a large social media outreach campaign, or donate thousands of dollars.

All it takes is you, 7 other people, and a laptop!

Honourable mention goes out to Heather Twining for her mad shopping and coupon ‘skillz’ to ensure the pledges received buys the maximum amount of food for YWCA Niagara food bank.

Photo credit : Trevor and Heather Twining

Last week, I watched my twins graduate from grade 6.  In addition to reaching a milestone in life, they were also acknowledged by their teachers and fellow students by receiving awards based on leadership and sportsmanship.

I was very proud.

However, their accomplishments did not surprise me (okay, maybe a little).  Both Kari and I have always done our best to teach them about the realities of life and what’s really important.

You see, winning awards is not the important thing, it’s why they won the awards in the first place.  Meaning, we’ve tried to teach them how to be individuals, to help others, and to go after their dreams even if this means they might fail.

In my experience, society does not place enough value and significance on failure.  In the school system, we celebrate achievement with good grades, awards, and a pat on the back. As a result, children learn if they do certain things they will receive a positive outcome. However, if they strive for something greater and fail they may receive no official acknowledgment.

My point is this: it’s important for kids to also be rewarded (at graduation) for trying something and failing.  By doing so, over time they might learn how to recover from a set-back faster.  I’m not suggesting one has to fail in order to succeed.  I’m merely saying that when one DOES fail, it’s helpful to know that it’s okay and to then learn from the experience in order to move on.

Let’s teach our kids the importance and significance of failing.

photo credit: Alex E. Proimos

Something interesting happened today.  As you may know, while at SXSW, I attended Gary Vaynerchuk’s keynote called the Thank you economy (also the title of his latest book).

During his keynote, he told the audience he was retiring from doing his daily video blog on Wine Library TV to pursue a new project called DailyGrape.com.  Among other things, the Daily Grape is an iPhone app that brings you a daily dose of wine education and recommendations in the form of short daily videos from you guessed it, Gary.

Since I love wine, and live just 20 minutes from 85 thriving wineries in the Niagara wine region I downloaded the app.  Unfortunately, the audio on the mobile video player didn’t work.

Today after seeing one of Gary’s tweets, I decided to reach out to him about my problem.  Partly, I wanted to test whether or not he practiced what he preached.  Mostly, however, I just needed my problem solved.  In exactly 11 minutes, I received a response from Gary.

Here’s the conversation:

My phone was on vibrate.  I turned off vibrate.  Audio worked.  Problem solved.

What’s My Point

This guy really cares.  He really gives a shit.  He really does hustle.

Sure, he’s an entrepreneur and has his reasons.  We all do, but more importantly, this New York Times bestselling author and entrepreneur who runs a multimillion operation took the time on his Saturday morning to respond to a [insert profane word here] customer service request?!?

Sure, it may not be scalable, but he’s made me a believer.  He’s inspired me to care more.  To give a shit more.  To hustle, and strive to make a difference.

Thanks Gary.