When I was 30-years old, I had an awakening. I had gone through my 20s very angry about many things. When I finally reached the big 3-0, I was:

• Single after ending a 5-year relationship
• Back in church after not stepping foot in one for over 8-years
• Hopelessly bouncing between periods of wild wealth and abject poverty and wondering how I would break the cycle

It was the summer of my 30th birthday when I attended T. Harv Eker’s 3-day intensive Millionaire Mind seminar. From 8:30am til about 6:30pm on Friday, Saturday and Sunday on a hot, humid and muggy weekend, I crammed into the Metro Convention Centre in downtown Toronto with a couple thousand other people to develop our millionaire mindset.

And what a powerful experience.

I still have the notebook filled with all the notes I copied down from that 3-day event. We did tons of exercises on how to have a better relationship with our money. As I look at my notes, a couple things stood out that changed my destiny for good…

That if I don’t respect my money, it won’t stay where it’s not wanted.

Why Social Media Is No Longer About Marketing

If you haven’t figured it out, people don’t need you in order to talk about your brand. They’ll go to Twitter, Facebook and blogs, meet up with your fans (or foes) and carry on a conversation.

At last year’s Social Media Telesummit, best selling author David Meerman Scott spoke about the need to let your message go. I distinctly remember him saying during his keynote that you need to make your web content available to your fans with no strings attached.

Meaning no opt-in forms. In other words, forget collecting first names and email addresses so that people can download your PDF.

That’s so 2006.

In today’s marketplace, not only do people want to consume your content, but they also want to do so on their own terms and in their own way.

Every Person Is a Centre of Influence

I stumbled upon a blog post written by Paul Chaney, author of The Digital Handshake, called Seven Social Media Mindset Markers. Out of the points made, this is the one that stuck out the most:

“Every participant in social media is a center of influence to some extent, even those far down the long-tail. In social media, the important thing is not how many eyeballs read the content, but who those eyeballs belong to.”

For the 2010 Social Media Telesummit, I decided that I wouldn’t write up promo emails or sample tweets for affiliates to copy and paste and share with their network. I did this for the 2008 & 2009 telesummits, but just couldn’t be bothered for 2010.

(BTW, I’m providing sneak peeks of the 2010 Social Media Telesummit through my preview call series. You can sign up for them on the front page.)

To be honest, I ran out of time and just wasn’t in a creative mood to write up 6-weeks worth of content.

But this turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

You see, if social media is about being transparent and being authentic, then affiliates should create their own promo messages in their own voice.

Lose control of the message and rely on the creativity of others to push the message out.

What have I seen so far? Speakers and affiliates are using the tools that they like to share their message with their networks. For example:

• Nancy Marmolejo, Shannon Cherry & Donna Maria Coles Johnson all blogged about their participation in the 2010 Social Media Telesummit in their own unique voice.
• Other speakers such as Derek Fredrickson and Michele PW tweeted about their participation.
• Still others such as Andrew Ballenthin and Dean Hua have used LinkedIn and Facebook respectively to tell their network about this virtual event.

And while the number of clickthroughs have been less compared to years past, the number of registrants is the same.

Go figure.

Instead of forcing people to take notice, I have given each person the free reign to share news about the 2010 Social Media Telesummit in their own way, in their own voice, using their favourite tool.

What a concept.

And since everyone is a centre of influence, I don’t need to force people to share my marketing message in the way I want them to.

Instead, I provide them with the idea and let them massage it in a way that fits their unique style. Shall we call this authentic marketing? Or transparent marketing? Naw, let’s just call this a mindset and be done with it.

And you’re curious how to cultivate a social media mindset, join me and 14 speakers at the 2010 Social Media Telesummit. I’m hosting preview calls on January 14 & 18, 2010 at 12pm ET to give you a sneak peek of all the great content that the faculty members will share. Click here to get the call-in details (and yes, it’s an opt-in form).