Margie Clayman

Letter, July 21, 2016

Dear you,

I hope you’re feeling better today. I am feeling nostalgic this week. On Monday, the sky was that perfect summer blue and it was filled with big July puffy clouds. The locusts were singing, the trees are at the height of their greenness, and I was transported immediately back to my childhood and summer vacation. I wasted so much of my summer vacations, spending hours upon hours inside watching VH1 and MTV, which actually showed music videos at the time. That’s how old I am.

Of course, it’s hard to appreciate a vacation after it has been going for a couple of months, I suppose. Maybe you need the contrast between a hustle and bustle day versus one where the porch is the epicenter of your plan. Maybe we should go to school all year round and get summer vacation as adults. But then how would that work for teachers? Somebody figure this out for me.

I have not touched on the news of the day, which is that a Black care giver was shot in North Miami while he was lying on the ground with his hands up. The police officer was asked why he shot this man, who was completely unarmed, and his response was, “I don’t know.” I think it would be better to say, “I have racist programming in my head that I can’t overcome, and when I see a Black man my first instinct is to shoot.” Saying “I don’t know” makes it seem like you decided to destroy an ant hill or something. “I don’t know. I didn’t have anything else to do.”

It will be interesting to see how this one gets turned around. “By lying down I assumed he was taking an aggressive position.” Maybe.

Anyway, enough of that.

I hope you’re well. Let me know what you’re up to. Talk later.

~Margie

A Special #Tweetdiner to support one of our own

by Margie Clayman

The Twitter chat I co-founded called #Tweetdiner has never been quite like other chats. First of all, for some reason, most chats don’t incorporate digital food fights. Clearly they are the weird ones. #Tweetdiner never really had any particular topic, except on rare occasions. Rather, the chat has mostly been about friends getting together and chatting conversationally in real time. Last year we got together to remember our friend, Claudia Jackson, who passed away quite unexpectedly. This month, July 28th to be precise, I’d like to host a #Tweetdiner to help out our long-time diner family member, James Fierce.

The deal is this. James has been having a heckuva time over the last few years, but he refuses to be defeated. He wants to start his own importing and consulting business, but he needs a little bit of a boost to get that going. If you know James you’ve probably been supported by him in one way or another, so you know that he certainly merits a little help. James has started a GoFundMe campaign that explains all of the obstacles he has had to deal with along with where he is hoping to go next.

The goal of our chat will be two-fold. Well, actually three-fold. First, it’ll be a reunion, which is always fun. Second, we will strive to get James up and over his campaign goal over the course of the chat. And finally, per James’ request (and this shows how awesome he is) we’ll be talking about how men are impacted by depression and chronic illness. Men often feel pressure to stay quiet about these things, leaving them to either despair on their own or having no option but to pull their own selves up by the bootstraps.

The chat will run from 8-9 PM ET on Thursday, July 28th.

Spread the word, and I hope to see you there!

Six Years In, I’m Done with the Social Media Game

by Margie Clayman

Six years ago today, I wrote my first blog post. It was not here. It was at a little Blogger site called The Real Mad Man. I had started tweeting a little beforehand.

My reasons for joining Twitter were pretty simple. I had been invited to talk about social media before a group of manufacturers at a small trade show. I knew the concepts behind social media for marketing, but I thought it was important to actually show that I knew what I was talking about. I feverishly tried to build a Twitter presence. Facebook wasn’t quite as important to marketers back in the day.

I realized pretty quickly that just trying to tweet was not really working. I needed something to share that gave me more than 140 characters to show my personality. Enter the blog site.

As time went on, over the next probably 7 years or so, I found myself, remarkably, climbing up the ladder amongst social media marketers. I found my blog posts getting shared by people who had written books and who had huge followings. I found myself on “best of” lists. I started to think about books to write so that I could go out on a speaking tour. When the great recession hit all of this seemed like it would be easier than clawing for business in the traditional way. With all of the support I was getting, it seemed like I could really do this. I became that person who humble bragged about getting mentioned by this or that person. I fiercely lamented decreases in any of my follower counts. How could anyone want to unfollow me? I was great!

Yeah. I started to get REAL cocky. I began to question myself. And I haven’t stopped.

The Social Media Marketing Corner – Is This Real Life?

A lot has changed about the social media marketing segment of the social media world over the last few years. There are people writing books today who are terrible writers. There are people writing about social good and how to be a hero to people when they treat people in abysmal fashion off the blog sites and social media platforms. Individual consultants have grouped together like amoeba to form consortiums of consultants, and they spend much of their time (so it seems to me) talking to each other online. It’s kind of like those disgusting dating or married couples who post to each other on Facebook all day. “I love you. No I love you more. I miss youuuu.” Like yuck, man.

In the old days (five years ago) people with big followings tended to show gratitude for kind words and interest in differing opinions. Today the good words are clearly expected, and even slightly differing opinions are dismissed. It is no wonder that so much of the social media marketing world consists now of talk about “influencers.” When you consider yourself an influencer, talking about how important you are works out pretty well.

No Longer Riding on the Merry-Go-Round

When I say I am leaving the social media game, I do not mean I am leaving social media. I just mean I am excusing myself from the remarkably ugly world that social media marketers have created. Here is the reality for me. My clients are primarily B2B manufacturers. Do any of the leading social media marketers know what a plumb borehole is? Do they know the difference between a cylindrical floor machine brush and a rotary floor machine brush? Can they speak to lean manufacturing and what goes into getting ISO-certified? Maybe some of them, but overall, these folks are not remotely speaking the language that the manufacturers I know need to hear. Virtual reality is great, but let’s talk about not being able to attract the right kind of work force for the work that needs to be done. Let’s talk about China knock-offs and what lower oil & gas prices really mean for businesses in the industrial sector.

I don’t need to be on a “best of” list to be able to talk to my clients about marketing of any kind. I need to be able to talk to them in a way that shows I really understand where they’re coming from. The social media marketing world does not provide that context or that venue.

What I’ll Be Using Social Media for Now

I’m going to be using social media for two things moving forward. One is not new. I am going to be trying to reach out to companies that need help in today’s increasingly confusing marketing and business world. I’ll be running social media campaigns for some of my clients, too. And I will not be bowing to the gurus in that case either. Influencers for my clients would likely be names you would never recognize unless you’re in the marketing sector too.

But I am also going to be honing my presence for an important purpose. I am going to be striving to reach out to young people who are growing up small. Whether they have achondroplastic dwarfism or another kind like me, these kids are not provided with a whole lot of real life role models. Tyrion Lannister is great but may not be the best example to follow. I want to give young people someone to reach out to who has survived the humiliation and pain of bullying to reach the humiliation of the adult life while still living a fairly regular life. I want to show what kinds of obstacles they might face so they can prepare for them. I want to give parents ideas of how to support their kids.

When I was in high school, I had the opportunity to meet a city leader who was an achondroplastic dwarf – that means she was the kind of dwarf Peter Dinklage or the people on the TLC shows are. A bit before we were due to meet, she canceled. I was heartbroken. I finally had a chance to hear from someone who had found success – a person I could talk to, not just Danny DeVito. It felt like a real slap in the face.

I want to make up for that now. With the voice that I have online, I hope I can reach some kids who need that kind of understanding. Yes, you can make it, even though it’s hard sometimes.

So, that’s where I am on my sixth anniversary of starting to do online…things. As always, there are people who have been with me this whole time, and to them I owe a huge debt of gratitude. I hope I can continue to earn your support and friendship.

#ForTheHealthOfIt

by Margie Clayman

I’d like to announce a hashtag I am starting that I hope catches on. It’s called, as you might have guessed from my subject line, #ForTheHealthOfIt.

I was inspired by one last conversation I saw after millions of others that went something like this.

Person A: It is 11:30 and I am having my 15th cup of coffee because I am so busy.

Person B: I feel your pain. I am on my 20th.

Person C: I know. I have been up since 3:30 and no break in sight.

I feel like people post this stuff online to show off. Maybe it’s to show off how busy they are, or maybe they want to show clients or bosses how dedicated they are. Maybe it’s a combination of those reasons and more. I used to do this to some extent. I would post, “OMG I am on my 7th white paper this week and blah blah blah.”

Here is my concern. I am worried that marketing folks and entrepreneurs (the 2 often intersect) are one of the most unhealthy collections of professionals around right now. We’re at our desks most of the time, and there are long hours of writing, meetings, sitting on planes, eating airport food, eating trade show food (not sure which is worse), and pressure. There is deadline pressure. There is pressure to look hungry for your business. There is pressure to always be available, always “on.” There is so much pressure, in fact, that if given the chance to, say, cook a healthy meal or use that extra hour to do work, our crew will often choose the latter. A sunny day means we can sit on our butts and look outside at the pretty scenery, even before and after regular hours.

Here’s the problem. This all catches up with you. You may not see it coming because it can be slow and steady, but that constant crappy food, no exercise, no sleep lifestyle you’re leading can have extremely damaging, long-lasting impacts on your life. Guess what? If you end up with a heart attack, you’re gonna miss all kinds of work. Guess what else? If you die your family and friends will not care a jot about how many times you stayed up working till 4 AM.

The Call to Action

Entrepreneurs and Marketers understand the “call to action” phrase. So here is mine.

Every day, just once, I want you to post something you did to take care of yourself with the hashtag #ForTheHealthOfIt. Did you opt to eat a salad instead of a hot dog? Did you do the steps instead of the elevator? Did you make yourself take a half hour to walk instead of eating lunch and watching more content marketing or SnapChat webinars? Post it all.

What I hope more than anything is that this makes people think about doing one little thing every day for their health. That can be enough to get you wanting to do more good things for yourself. That good feeling gets addictive, you know? The idea is NOT to shame others or to use the hashtag to brag or make other people feel bad. It’s to make sure this mostly sedentary, overworking, over-caffeinated group of people lives past 60.

Are you in?

Experiment Number Two: Seed Tray Ho!

by Margie Clayman

I started with a whole new approach today. I am a bad scientist because I changed a few different things instead of just one at a time. What can I say. I am impatient!

The first different thing I tried was I went back to my “seed starter” tray that I got from one of those silly kits a couple of years ago. I did this for a couple of reasons. First, Aaron at Tyrant Farms suggested that my soil wasn’t deep enough in the pots I was using, so I might have been unintentionally creating a shadow for the little greenies. My friend Monika also mentioned that she often starts off with a plastic covering to hold in heat and moisture. Given that Georgia O’Keefe has been wandering around in my abode looking for things to paint, moisture is probably something I should help my plants maintain.

My tray is set up in rows of three, so I put a sticker on one end and kept track of what I was planting on a chart. There are lots of other ones I want to try (and thanks to Grow Journey I get a new packet every month) so I figure I will try those once I either give up on what I have or (more optimistically) once I can transfer sprouts to bigger pots. You’re probably wondering what made the first cut. Well…

Everlasting Spinach

Iko Iko Pepper

Japanese Black Trifele Tomato

Amish Paste Tomato

Cosmic Purple Carrot

Romanesco Cauliflower

Aunt Molly’s Ground Cherry

Rhubarb Chard

German Winter Thyme (this will be try #4 for this)

Evergreen Bunching Scallions

Purple Long Eggplant

Astro Arugula

Butterfly Spinach

Vit Mache Greens (the story behind this is really cool)

Russian Frills Kale

Hon Tsai Tsai Sprouting Broccoli

Garden Chives

Large Leaf Basil

This is, of course, a lot, and I will have to buy many more pots if they all succeed. However, that would be a problem I would love to have.

So, what are you up to? Planning your garden? Planting your garden? Let me know how it’s going!

Failure is a Key Part of Gardening

by Margie Clayman

A couple of weeks ago I tried to get three different seeds started. As of today, none of them have taken off. Nothing green at all. Yeah, I’m kind of bummed. All of this snow on the ground (we got about a food) is making me lust after green things. But it’s important to note that although this is disappointing, it doesn’t shake my resolve whatsoever. The fact is, I have learned one pretty important thing over my years of attempted gardening, and that is that failure tends to happen an awful lot. Gardening is not just a matter of placing seeds in dirt and crossing your fingers. It’s an art, and each seed, each plant, requires you to use a different set of tools to make it thrive.

I think this facet of gardening is what turns a lot of people off. It’s bad enough that you have to wait for something to happen in this era of instant gratification. The idea that a lot of the stuff you plant will just simply never come to anything does not sound like a great motivation to even bother trying. There are farmers, farmers’ markets, and worst case scenario, you can just get your damned carrots at the grocery store. Pulling them out of the dirt doesn’t mean THAT much.

All of that is part of what makes me love gardening so much. Sure, a lot of things may not work out. Last summer was one of my worst gardening summers ever. One plant grew a bunch of tomatoes but they all had rust on them. My other tomato plants got tons of flowers but never grew fruit. My peppers…I can’t even explain what they did. And my zucchini plant grew one little zucchini and that was it. However, I have had successful efforts, and those make all of the tries worth it. Deciding that you want some basil with your pasta and just walking outside to cut some is intensely rewarding for me. Knowing that you helped make that basil happen makes it all the better. Every failure that you get in gardening reminds you that anything that goes right is truly miraculous.

Gardening is a risky business, as is anything that has to do with life. It might not work. Your lettuce might bolt, you might get weird destructive bugs, the weather might be too dry or too wet, too hot or too cold. But all of these risks apply to any kind of relationship with living organisms. People continue to have kids even though so much can go wrong. But so much can go right. People adopt dogs and cats and rabbits and gerbils, knowing from the start that these animals will live in our hearts but won’t be alive as long as we would like them to live. But we care for them anyway, even with all of the risks inherent in that venture.

Failures do not turn me off from gardening. They are chances to learn, chances to do better. My friends at Tyrant Farms told me that I need to put more soil in the pots I’m using, so I am going to try that. Another friend suggested maybe I start the seeds in more of a starter kit versus the actual pot. I’m thinking I might go that route. There are lots of other things to try. Maybe my location for the plants isn’t great. Maybe I watered too much or too little. But I know that eventually I will be successful, and that food will taste so extra good because I will know what it took to make it grow.

If you are thinking gardening isn’t for you just because you don’t have that magical green thumb, don’t hold yourself back. Give it a try. And then give it another try. Have fun with it. I’ll bet you catch the gardening bug!

Margie Clayman

The Call to Action

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