"That may have been the stupidest thing Ben has done in his career..." Words I heard just prior to BBDO Atlanta allowing me to spend more time with my cat Casandra.

Corporate folk often don't have the greatest sense of humor. A single question can raise such a big stir. It's two years later and I just heard the story of me asking the question that got me fired. Somebody else telling the story to me, not knowing who I am or my side of the story...
For the record, there is NO WAY that question was the stupidest thing I've done in my career. I've done far stupider things.

This BLOG may be the stupidest thing I've done so far...maybe after not-investing $10,000 when Google sent out that one email looking for early investors. What would that be worth now? $23,000,000 I recently read. Real smart there, Ben.

You gotta give me that NOT investing in Google's first offering to friends of the program was way stupider than ANY QUESTION, even if it did get me fired from a Senior Vice President, Brand Strategy Director working on Cingular.

With this blog, I risk alienating myself from the community I hope to join. And that might cost me more than the $23 mil I left on the table by not investing $10k when Google asked. Did I just hear somebody say "yeah, right?" Then, they don't know their Online Marketing history very well to comprehend the scope of possibility just now becoming mainstream knowledge.

Yesterday, I included a few sentences in my post from a private email. I viewed it as innocuous and that's irrelevant...THE LINES WERE FROM A PRIVATE EMAIL. I get it now. I pulled out the quote. I move on, damn I hope I didn't crap all over this project.

What am I doing here? Is this a meaningless, self-expression rant/blog like I had last summer when I met some of you at the Joyner/Halbert Fusion seminar in Miami and I blogged about covering Jeff Lloyd's Baja 500 race and being dragged through the brothels of Ensenada, Mexico? No.
This blog is about MONEY. About making MORE money.

What's the damn question that got me fired?

This was in 2003 the day before Cingular was going to announce the new partnership with
AOL Instant Messanger on the handset. The Chief Marketing Officer was doing a dress rehearsal of what he was going to say to the media the next day. We had a room full of 100 marketers and he gave his spiel and typed into the computer a message to be sent to the handset. Imagine a stage with two HUGE projection TV screens. One image from the computer that sent the IM (instant message) and the other of the screen of the wireless handset, what normal people called a phone.

The CMO hit send on the computer...

nothing happened

Still nothing happened

More time went by and yet the handset screen was blank. Nothing was happening. We're talking eight seconds by this point which might not seem like a tremendous amount of time, but in a room with expectation, eyes glued to HUGE MONITORS it felt like...

NOTHING WAS HAPPENING

Twelve seconds have gone by and still NOTHING!

The words I heard come out of my mouth were:

"Are we still going to call it Instant Messenger?"

The crowd cracked up, laughing very hard. The CMO sneered. I heard the president of BBDO turn to by boss, an EVP and say, "That may have been the stupidest thing Ben has done in his career..."

Well it wasn't. Not investing in Google when I had the opportunity was far stupider. My biggest mistakes in business have been a lack of action. Doing stuff has been respected by people I admire. That's why I'm creating this blog.

Mark said he was sending me a bottle of Colinix. I said I would blog about my experience. A few folks I really admire at Big Seminar said they wanted to do it also. Doing something as a group creates a support network. If you are doing what the group is doing you are entrained with that group.

I'm tired of making webpages that create a stir online and make me no money. I just signed up for Google AdSense. If I had that up when I was running WhatWouldBillHicksSay.com I would have garnered a modicum of $$$, and perhaps the wrath of the Bill Hicks estate. However, there is no excuse I have for not having collected email addresses from those that visited the site.

If you want to read about these antics, that's welcomed. If you want to participate...GREAT! Please buy Colinx and plan on beginning May 1, 2006. There will be some damn smart marketers joining us, and you know what, these guys have a sense of humor.
This may just be the crappiest offer on the entire Internet.