Make It Great! with Phil Gerbyshak

Happy Mother's Day

To all my friends who are mothers, and all my friends who have mothers, I wanted to wish you a very happy mother's day! I'm spending today with my mom, and I encourage you to get away from your computer and enjoy the day with yours.

If you'd like to connect to me any other day, please visit the new Make It Great!, now powered by WordPress and enjoy the wonderful design created by Jesse Petersen.

I'm also using Twitter more and more for a conversation stream and to share more and more great links and great ideas. At 140, commitment is only a sentence away :) You can find me @philgerb (http://twitter.com/philgerb if you're new to Twitter).

Last but not least, if you want a broadcast channel with my writings about Make It Great! and Slacker Manager, follow @philgerbyshak (http://twitter.com/philgerbyshak) I don't interact much, if at all, on that channel, so if I don't reply to you, don't be surprised. It's not personal at all, but it can be useful if you know what you're getting.

Again, happy mother's day! See you on the other side!

Moved to Make It Greater!

Friends,

After 4 wonderful years, I have decided to take the plunge and move to a full on domain on WordPress. As I moved the feed over to the new site, if you were reading via RSS, then you won’t miss a post.

The feed is still http://feeds2.feedburner.com/makeitgreat

Oh yeah, the website is http://philgerbyshak.com

I’ll leave this up for a little while longer, but soon, it will be no more.

Please bookmark the new page, and if you’re nice enough to link to me in your sidebar or on any post, if you’d be so kind as to link to me at my new home (that’s http://philgerbyshak.com if you’re scoring at home), I’d really appreciate it.

Why did I move, you might be wondering? In a word, control. Allow me to explain a little more what I mean.

1) More people customize WordPress templates than TypePad templates, so I could find a GREAT WordPress designer to help me (thanks Jesse).

2) Better design means I can add widgets, I can make each page look a little different if I want to, and I can do things I just can’t do on TypePad without a LOT of help and/or work.

3) Subscribe to comments – folks can get the conversation going if they choose to do so by subscribing to comments.

4) Tinkering – I can play around on the blog a bit more and not worry about breaking it.

5) I already use WordPress on Slacker Manager, and I know it pretty darn well, so I can do more, and I can teach people how to use it better.

I hope you’ll join me at my new home at http://philgerbyshak.com. It’s been a fun ride here, but I’m REALLY excited about what’s going to happen next.

Your friend,
Phil Gerbyshak

Moving day courtesy of rbphalen

4 years and still going

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

It’s hard for me to believe it, but I’ve been Making It Great! as a blogger since March 4, 2005. I started out with a blogger blog, then because of David St. Lawrence poking me and telling me I needed to be a “real blogger” and accept trackbacks, I moved to TypePad, and life hasn’t been the same since.

It’s truly amazing what has happened to me in the 4 years I’ve been blogging. Here are just a few of my highlights.

• I published my first book 10 Ways to Make It Great! with much of the content inspired by my articles and the comments on this very blog
• I spoke about being a Relationship Geek at the first SOBCon (and have given over 50 other speeches since then about a variety of topics)
• I had breakfast/lunch/dinner with over 100 other bloggers all across the country (but I haven’t made it to Des Moines yet, sorry gang!)
• I’ve gotten over 200 books sent to me to review (and reviewed 50 or so of them)
• I’ve exchanged emails with over 3000 people (and have received over 3000 comments on this blog)
• I’ve talked on the phone to over 500 people who read this blog or whose blog I read
• I attended 800-CEO-READ’s Author Pow-Wow (and I look forward to attending the next one)

But the most important thing I gained from this blog is even more simple than any of this:

I’ve gained a LOT of new friends!

I’ve enjoyed connecting with folks from around the world, that I can call, email, or write to, and that are there to listen to me and bounce ideas off of.

Thank you to each and every person who has read one of my blog posts, who cared enough to leave a comment, to send me an e-mail, to call me on the phone, and to connect with me in some small way.

Coming soon will be another big change. Please stay tuned!

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

Make a PLAN and Make It Great: 2009 Keynote Speech

Recession Proof Your Life: Make a PLAN and Make It Great

View more presentations from Phil Gerbyshak. (tags: new media)

This is the keynote presentation I've been giving this year. It's called Recession Proof Your Life: Make a PLAN and Make It Great!

It’s got 4 key points in the PLAN:

P is for Purpose

L is for Learning

A is for Attitude

N is for Network (and using New Media to grow and cultivate it)

I’d love your help to make it great! If you have any feedback on how to make this great^er, please let me know!

Thanks in advance.

Building Relationships for Better Business

Join me in 30 minutes (Monday, January 19th, 2009) at 5 PM central for a conversation with Tia Carr Williams on the Relationship Capital show. Our talk is called Building Good Relationships for Better Business, and I’ll be sharing my best insights into how you can build relationships to grow your business and your life!

Call in at (347) 945-7093.

If you can’t join me live, please stop back later to download the audio from the Relationship Capital show.

2009 Wish for You

Greetings friends,

As 2008 is now ripped off the calendar and we move to making it great in 2009, I thought I would share my 1 and only wish for you this year:

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." - Theodore Roosevelt

That’s the essence of what making it great is. It’s all up to YOU!

• Your personal best
• Your goals
• Your hopes
• Your dreams

You can do what you can, with what you have, right where you are.

Sure, you might need to change a few ways of thinking, lose a few old habits, create some new habits, and grow beyond your comfort zone.

You CAN do it! I believe in you.

And if I can help you in any way along the way, I hope you’ll let me know how.

This year I plan to ask you for help too!

I’m on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and I’d love to connect with you there and introduce you to other people’s who can help you.

Thanks for joining me to make it great in 2008…and here’s to making it even GREATER in 2009!

Phil Gerbyshak
Slacker Manager
Make it Great Guy

Merry Christmas!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Hope you have a fantastic Christmas this year! Here's a little dance from me, to you, where ever you are!

Happy Birthday to ME!

 

Happy birthday to ME! Today, December 2nd, 2008 is my birthday, so I am giving away a free copy of my book 10 Ways to Make It Great to you!

No obligation, just right click here and download it. Of course if you want a hard copy of the book, you can click on 10 Ways to Make It Great and order a copy.

If you’d like to share this with your friends, enemies and blog readers, please share the link to this post, not directly to the ebook, as I will be revising the ebook and the link in the future.

If you've been here for a long time (Make It Great! has been online since March 3, 2005), thank you for your continued readership and friendship.

If this is your first time here, take a look around and see what you can find that interests you.

• Subscribe to Make It Great! via RSS (http://feeds.feedburner.com/makeitgreat). 
• Sign up for my weekly newsletter the Make It Great! Gazette!
• Hire me to speak to your organization

And happy birthday to Stephen Smith too! His birthday was yesterday :)

And happy happy birthday to Steve Sherlock, who shares my birthday!

Happy birthday photo credit to kyz

I want to Make It Great and I need YOUR help!

I’ve been writing Make It Great! for almost 4 years, 3 of those years on Typepad, 1 on Blogger, and now, I want to move my blog to it’s own domain using WordPress, and take my blog to the next level.

I want to Make It Great and I need YOUR help!

I have 2 questions for you, and I’d love your feedback:

What domain should I choose?

• Make It Great Guy.com
• Phil Gerbyshak.com (or PhilGerb.com for those who can’t spell Gerbyshak)
• Social Media Coach.com
• RelationshipGeek.com
• Something else (share it with me via e-mail)

What design do you like?

• MakeItGreatGuy.com (that’s where you are)
• PhilGerbyshak.com
• SocialMediaCoach.com
• RelationshipGeek.com
• Something else (share a look with me in the comments)?

For those who may be new here or who want to know my goals with my site, my goal is quite simple: To break free from corporate America in the not-too-distant future and do public speaking, coaching, writing and training. Topics I specialize in are personal branding, customer service, and management, which all revolve around the importance of connecting people to ideas and most importantly, to other people.

Thanks for reading and for sharing your suggestions with me. I’m really good at helping other people brand themselves, I just have a hard time getting clear on me, and I really appreciate your help!

Join me on the Get More Business Show

Tomorrow I’ll be joining the Small Business Guru Melody Campbell on the Get More Business show, to talk about how to build community and traffic for your blog.

Date: Friday October 10th

Time: 11 AM Central

Location and details: Get More Business show

Hope you can join us, or bookmark the Get More Business show and go back to listen later!